Australia Mourns the End of Its Car Manufacturing Industry
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Australia's economy is heavily dependent on mining, and China's economic growth created a local mining boom. This resulted in heavy demand for Australian dollars, and at its peak in 2013 1 AUD was worth about 1.05 USD.
It was at this time that Ford (the weakest of the three Australian manufacturers) made the decision to close its Australian manufacturing operations. The high value of the local currency meant the factory was unprofitable and uncompetitive with other factories around the world.
The conservative government at the time, led by Tony Abbott, refused to provide subsidies to help close the gap (even temporarily).
Toyota and GM Holden had similar problems, and all knew that the local automotive parts suppliers needed at least three companies to sell to. So once Ford was out, the supply chain for parts became unsustainable, and the others quickly announced that they would pull out too. It takes time to close an entire industry, which is why all three companies closed their factories in 2017.
Around 2015 the slowdown in China's growth led to a slowdown in Australia's mining industry, and a drop in the AUD. It dropped to around 0.80 USD, and interestingly, Australia's car manufacturers became quite profitable again. But the wheels were already in motion and the decisions couldn't be reversed.
Australia's mining industry has bought in a lot of money, but its impact on the dollar has done a lot of damage to the country's export economy. There's a term that economists use to describe this: Dutch disease. Australia has a bad case of it.
Edit: s/80 USD/0.80 USD/
One of the main reasons the AUD remained at such high levels was because of the carry trade.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-09/carrying-the-australia...
From the link below you can see the Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates very high during that period:
http://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/cash-rate/
That allowed big multinational banks to borrow massive amounts of money in one country at a near zero interest rate and park that cash in Australia to get a guaranteed 4% return on those billions. That create the high demand for the AUD which drove up it's price.
The RBA was asleep at the wheel as it should have driven down that cash rate much faster and far sooner than it did.
Only after they finally moved and started cutting the interest rate did the dollar fall to the levels we see today.
Unfortunately, they now find themselves in a bit of a mess, since the economy really needs another rate cut to help repair the damage caused by that high dollar.
However they can't do that because it would add fuel to an already over heated property market, which is starting to look a lot like a bubble.
If they had moved earlier, the local manufacturing/export/tourist industries would be much stronger today and the RBA would in fact now be in a position to raise rates, something that is desperately need to take heat out of the property bubble.
Unfortunately, we needed our bubble burst nearly a decade ago. When it bursts now, the pain is going to be incalculable.
Ultimately there's only so much you can do with interest rates.
Consider this chart of the AUD to the USD over that time:
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y
From the RBA interest rate chart linked earlier you get these maximum yearly numbers over the last decade:
Year Rate AUD
2008 7.25 0.69
2009 3.00 0.91
2010 4.75 0.98
2011 4.75 1.10
2012 4.25 1.51
2013 3.00 1.50
2014 2.50 0.94
2017 1.50 0.80
Thanks to those high rates the carry trade kept the AUD high, but those high rates also put a dampener on the housing market.
Now during that time most of Australia was struggling, but two mining states (WA, QLD) where doing extremely.
China had created a commodities bubble that saw iron ore prices well over the $100 a tonne.
By 2014 the mining bubble had bursts, so much so that WA, the once booming state was on it's way to recession.
Only then does the RBA then decides to move on rates.
However those 7 years of high AUD has really hurt the local export industry, the tourist sector and the agricultural sector industry.
But even after 2014 the RBA is still slow to cut so the carry trade persists, keeping the AUD stubbornly high.
However, with the rate now at 2.50% and going even lower in the years to come, mortgages are now very cheap and only getting cheaper.
Say goodbye to the mining boom and welcome to the housing bubble.
Might point would be, if they had cut faster after the GFC they would have kept alive the other non mining sectors and then, if they had seen a problem developing in the housing market they could have raised rates to deal with the issue.
Over that time they did the exact opposite.
https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/australia-histo...
In hindsight it's easy to say what should be done but they really look like they've done a pretty decent job. No economy grows forever and Australia has had a very good run in recent history.
Like most of the developed world wage growth in Australia is flat and has been flat for at least the last decade. So wages growth has not driving up inflation.
However, each time a cyclone hits Queensland that drives up the price of bananas and other fruits, which does drive up inflation.
Add to that the fact you can now buy Australian gas at a cheaper price in all parts of the world other than Australia. Go figure?
Then consider the fact we closed our oil refineries so we could import our gasoline from Singapore.
Strangely enough when the international price of oil goes up (or the AUD dollar goes down), we instantly pay more for our gasoline.
However when the international price of oil drops (or the AUD dollar goes up) the price of gasoline takes weeks to come down. Strange?
Add to that the current joke in Australia where most state governments have privatised their electricity utilities only to see the price of electricity increase by 20% in last quarter.
So yes we do have lots of inflationary pressure here in Australia, but most of that pressure is created by the multi-nationals screwing us with our elected governments providing the lubrication.
It's especially important to note the difference between the resource driven WA economy and the property driven Sydney/Melbourne economy.
The posts about low quality are just continuing stereotypes, and the data shows the opposite. Look at the ratings for any Australian built cars that were exported or sold in Australia, and they do really well.
The thing about long supply routes is wrong too. Mass freight is just so cheap that location doesn't matter.
The exchange rate killed the industry. $A1 bought $US0.5 in 2000, and $1.05 in 2013. Hard to export competitively when that happens.
OTOH we did avoid mass unemployment during the financial crisis, and the economy even kept growing so I guess that is the upside.
It's not so much the cost, but the time. Distance from your suppliers and customers can matter a great deal.
If you have to keep higher inventory because of longer lead times, or have to suspend the line (or store unfinished cars) while you wait for a part revision from a supplier, it puts you at a big disadvantage when you're waiting weeks for shipping rather than days.
Economies of scale is also an issue. In the absence of significant tariffs, it's hard to sustain an automotive industry that's only supplying a domestic market of ~24 million people. Countries like Canada and Sweden do sustain significant domestic automotive manufacturing, but they export a large portion of the cars to bigger markets.
But you're correct, of course, about the exchange rate being the primary cause. The resources boom drove the AUD higher, and also increased the cost of labour.
Which at $AUD1 = $US0.5 was happening pretty successfully, and even at 0.75 (or 0.8 like now) was possible.
In the absence of significant tariffs
Tariffs aren't the only form of government support, and are far from the best.
In Australia we had significant tariffs on cars until the Button plan reduced them over a long period of time. It lead to low quality cars being produced in Australia, which were uncompetitive internationally and couldn't be exported.
There are other forms of government support which are more effective, and could have been used in this case to keep the car industry going. Notably the car companies didn't ask for tariffs when campaigning for support.
increased the cost of labour
Not really, in South Australia.
It's not as if we didn't try to transition the industry to success. This Button plan was by a Labor government.
For reference: I grew up in Adelaide, about 15-20 minutes drive (15 km.. erm 9.3 miles for you lot) from the suburb where the Holden factory is located.
I remember as a student/early graduate (so, 2000 - 2003ish) having.. acquaintances who were in their early 20's, bringing home close to $AUD100K/year, for assembling commodores. People who would laugh about how funny it is to let a car leave the production line, with the wrong colour door handle fitted.
Another "acquaintance" took forever to get a resolution because his 2-door ute was delivered to him with a 20cm gap in the carpet on the passenger side. It went through the factory, through QA, through a DEALER and nobody fucking noticed a 20cm gap on the passenger side of the floor.
These were not high quality cars being built by well trained craftsmen. They weren't even average quality cars built by moderately trained craftsmen. They were pieces of shit slapped together by over paid idiots.
"Look at that old Holden! Hasn't needed a repair once in 30 years, not like these shitty foreign imports you get today!".
Nostalgia and lies are tricky bedfellows.
> "corrupting corporate influences and (especially) real estate developers vanished"
... and were replaced with a level of government corruption (and incompetence) that would have been funny if it weren't so sad.
I’ll complain about rising rents too, but from a place of “we need more housing” and not “people need to stop trying to live here.”
In 1999 (or thereabouts) I was sick of being run off the road on my motorbike and decided to buy a car. Being an IT contractor with silly Y2K rates going on, I had plenty of disposable cash.
First dealer was Toyota, Bill Allen's of Cheltenham. The salesman looked at me, decided I didn't have money then completely ignored me. Nice.
Second was an MG garage whos name escapes me. Literally every car was was wrong - either the doors didn't fit, or there was a clunk when they closed, or in one case they didn't bother fitting the rear brake light (internal) correctly and it fell off during the test drive.
I have never seen such a rubbish car in my life, literally each one I saw looked like it had been built on a Friday afternoon. No wonder they went bust.
Another anecdote: My boss at the time was awesome and from Birmingham, right next to the Rover/MG plant. He asked me to do a speech for his wedding anniversary, so I went along to a social club next door to the factory. I noticed there were hardly any of their own cars in the employee car park, it was all Ford, Mazda, etc. This tells its own tale, at a time where 'Buy British and save Rover' was trumpeted everywhere.
New Zealand's domestic car industry (where they simply connected the imported bits together) died in the late 80s when tariffs were removed and we've been better off for it.
Billions are being invested in replacing that stuff today, and every one of those projects cuts staffing needs 90%.
The plumbers will be there laughing at office wankers who thought they had a sweet gig.
Supposedly, the problem Rover hit was though their last-developed large car (Rover 75) was very good and reasonably popular, since they'd been pulled away from working with Honda by the sale to BMW, they had neither a modern middle-sized car nor a replacement for the Metro. Put that together with being passed from hand-to-hand (from BAe to BMW was 6 years, BMW to Phoenix another 6, and Phoenix lasted another 5) in an industry struggling from overproduction, and it was always problematic.
Whenever Citroen, GM, etc have gone bust, their respective governments have always stepped in. Competing in a loss-making industry against government-backed competitors is one tough game.
The only difference is Toyota models are just imported from elsewhere because they have a mostly global product line.
Ford and GM Holden now need to find either European or North American models to import that will suit the local market.
The other replacement is the European-built Mondeo, which is much more like the Falcon and far less offensive IMO.
You'd have to be rather silly to buy one: http://www.ancap.com.au/media-and-gallery/releases/ford-must...
Entitled bogans who think they're the Jamie Whincup but are more likely to hurt themselves and others than win any races?
Seriously, this is what track days are for.
“The driver’s door opened in the pole test, and whiplash protection for rear-end collisions was marginal,”"
"We spent all our money making the car look brutal and sexy to our target customers, so there was no money left to also make it safe". ... !
There are plenty of cars that are fun to drive and safe.
"“Of concern, the full width frontal test showed a risk of serious head, chest and leg injury for the rear passenger. There was also insufficient inflation of both the driver and front passenger airbags in the frontal offset test which allowed the driver’s head to contact the steering wheel and the passenger’s head to contact the dashboard,”
“The driver’s door opened in the pole test, and whiplash protection for rear-end collisions was marginal,”"
However, the demographic that buys Fords here in Australia are unlikely to read that ( or anything else...)
http://www.ancap.com.au/media-and-gallery/releases/ford-must...
I was surprised when it was reported that Toyota wanted to reduce the Christmas shutdown period from 21 days to 10 days in line with other international factories and the union rejected this. This was in the context of other car manufacturers shutting down in Australia at the time and they had to know that this attitude was risking Toyota leaving as well, but they just couldn't accept a reduction in any conditions.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/toyotas-altona-plant-to-st...
If I was doing 11 day fortnights I might want an extended holiday period over Xmas to get reacquainted with my family.
It is sad to read so many comments blaming the workers, their union and the quality of the cars.
Australia, a country of 24 million people, has more car brands competing for the customers dollar than any other country bar China.
"The flood of imports has given Australian car buyers more choice than ever before — and more than every other country on the planet except China.
Australia has 64 automotive brands, the US has 38 and the UK has 42." [1]
Why? Well Australia has extremely low import tariffs for cars lowering the barrier of entry for foreign car companies to compete. All while the countries from which Australia was buying these cars maintained import tariffs protecting their domestic car industries.
So Australia lets everyone import but everyone doesn't let Australia export. Sounds fair.
It is sad that politicians dogmatically denied car manufacturers the support of the state while these manufacturers are competing in an international environment where every other country is subsidising and supporting their local car manufacturers.
We see a similar ideological approach with Qantas. A lot of the major international airline carriers are de facto supported by the state but in Australia subsidies are a political no-go zone so we leave them to the dogs.... and blame the workers and their unions.
I'm as opposed to subsidies as the next man in the long term BUT these industries employ huge numbers of our citizens and foster unique and important skillsets. As a nation Australia should work towards the ideals of removing subsidies and trade barriers but why do we martyr ourselves for the cause while every one else is ignoring them?
[1] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/why-australian-car-ma...
A living wage as defined by the Harvester judgement, which seems to be what you are referencing, was based on begin paid enough money to be able to afford food, shelter and clothing for a family.
In the case I'm referencing the dispute is over whether the workers should have their standard break for Christmas reduced from 21 days to 10 days. I can't think of any other companies within Australia that offer such a generous Christmas break, but maybe there are some; i think it would be a very small number. What they were being asked to give up seemed very generous and the replacement of 10 days instead doesn't seem onerous - it still seems generous compared to many companies.
You'd have to ask the workers that lost their jobs if they are now better off having lost their jobs rather than stay competitive with other places by bringing their conditions in line with what is typical even within the country they live in.
I also disagree with the way you phrased your point, on one hand, you mention that the unions would not budge on conditions, but then state that they should have because "no other company that you know of" allows 21 days of holiday over the Christmas. First of all drawing to the fact that the Union represents workers, not companies, it makes sense why the companies have an interest in shortening the holiday break of the workers. It is not in the interest of workers however. To counter your point that their breaks should have been cut in line with that of other countries, then we should keep in mind that some Northern European countries are going further in terms of workers rights, in the opposite direction, so all of us a sudden, your advice that we should follow the lead of some countries leads us to question which way we go.
I would also like to highlight that the CFMEU (Construction) enforces a 17 day shutdown over the Christmas break, so there are other's who do lengthy breaks.
I also struggle to understand your last point about bringing conditions in line within the country they live in, Australia has Union representation across most industries. If you wish to do business in Australia, then you surely understand this, I would hazard a guess that given this, then good conditions and decent pay is the typical situation. Why would anyone want to degrade that?
Winning a race to the bottom is a zero sum game.
They weren't forced to take a reduction in Christmas leave. They company asked if they could, considering the local and international conditions in their industry. The workers weren't forced, it was their decision and they said no, presumably knowing that the consequence might be that this may be the straw that shuts the factory down permanently.
If the company had made a draconian decision that cut workers pay unreasonably, regardless of the current economic circumstances and pocketed this money, I'd agree strongly with you. But, this isn't what happened. The workers kept all of their conditions and the factory shut down.
There have to be some circumstances where you would see that it would be reasonable for workers to give up some conditions in the industry they are working in if it is under some economic pressure, either internally or externally? They may only agree to give them up temporarily until conditions improve, or make some other offer to help the company to increase output or reduce costs.
The reality is that Australia is an open, market economy. Its companies have to be competitive with the rest of the world in order for those companies to survive.
You say that companies only have an interest in shortening holiday breaks. But if this is the case, how did the holiday break end up as 21 days in the first place? Companies have to compete for workers too - there must have been a time when it was beneficial to the company to attract and retain workers with a longer Christmas break. You point out that some European countries have more workers rights, but this misses the point that the competitive pressure at the time wasn't for workers - it was on total cost of production.
Nobody wants to degrade good conditions and decent pay for workers. However, for many people that work in small business and haven't had a pay rise in several years can only look on with bemusement when highly unionized industries demand 4% pay rises plus extra Christmas holidays and then demand tax payer money when their industries falls over.
It seems like every time a unionized industry is asked to make a small concession that it's seen as a zero sum game, the thin end of the wedge, a race to the bottom and the apocalypse. It's blown completely out of proportion. Most industries go through ups and downs. The inflexible ones go broke.
Should people who have other means of support be allowed to hold jobs?
Executives, investors, management, industry, market, over production, competition, technology, and economics are never a factor.
Stupid labor.
Are the tariffs just not as high to effectively subsidize their local car industry?
To add. I think those counties understand that the car industry helps to invigorate many other parts of the economy, so it's sad to see AUS let that go like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_motor_vehicle_import...
So you we can speculate why, in a complicated world, the (cars, Australia) paring works badly while the (education, Australia) and (cars, [South!] Korea) pairings work well and the (cars, Taiwan) paring is somewhere in between.
But an important answer behind all of these is: The market speaketh thus.
This figure likely included a lot of overtime - the average annual salary at the Elizabeth plant was only $60,000 according to Senator Kim Carr.
This is because the base rate leaves out all of the various loadings that are applied under different circumstances. There are so many circumstances for loadings that the base rate becomes meaningless.
Overtime is only one way to get paid more than the base rate. Also, overtime becomes a meaningless word when you can get overtime just for working slightly non-standard hours, as opposed to working extra hours.
The agreements are written in a way that makes it really hard to calculate what a worker is actually likely to get paid annually. The only way to be certain is to look at the worker's group certificate for tax purposes.
So, while what Senator Carr said was probably technically correct, it was also meaningless since I would suggest that no worker was actually paid that amount in a year. It would be more meaningful to ask what the average amount on a worker's group certificate was.
> It would be more meaningful to ask what the average amount on a worker's group certificate was.
I think a better figure yet would be the average amount per FTE.
What they can't do though is lie to the tax office. That crosses a threshold from being misleading to being illegal.
There is a big incentive for unions to be misleading about what their members are paid. It's hard to garner a lot of sympathy from the public when the average member of the public is paid a lot less than the average union member. That's not to say that this is always the case - the wages, agreements and marketing to the public by the unions varies significantly between unionised industries.
I'm not interested in talking about unions like you are. Merely getting an accurate read on how much an employee earned.
What you're proposing is eliminating the value of people's time from the equation. Working extra hours or unsociable hours should be paid more because they represent the employee trading away their spare time for more money, and as spare time approaches zero the amount they require at the margin should also increase.
I don't think standardizing all hours across all employees is fair in that regard.
I also agree with you that it's important to get an accurate read on how much an employee earned. My point is that there are some people that have an incentive to obfuscate this amount and that I can only see one unambiguous way to avoid this obfuscation.
I think the starting point in these discussions should be what someone was actually paid, not what they might have been paid. Then if that amount can be justified by unsociable hours, extra hours, or whatever, then that's fine. But if the various hours, loadings or whatever seem unreasonable then that's a different discussion.
I wouldn't even normally be interested in what someone's paid - it's not my business. However, the car manufacturing industry is a different case since there was an expectation that tax payer's money should be used to bail it out. In my opinion, tax payers deserve to know what it is that they are paying for, in detail. Particularly in the car industries case since it seemed like every time that the government tipped in more money that it was closely followed by the workers getting a pay rise.
Ah I'm sorry if I was unclear with that one. I'm not suggesting that you think people should all be paid standard regular rates irrespective of time. I meant that if you use a lump sum "average per employee pay slip" number you're not taking in to account those details.
With full-time equivalent, if George works 60 hours for example he counts as 1.5FTE. After-hours work is harder to quantify, but usually employment agreements similarly put extra value on those hours that can be translated back to FTE.
This seems the sanest and most accurate way to figure it out. The number actual people earn per week is a misleading figure.
I think you might agree with me here, because you said "Then if that amount can be justified by unsociable hours, extra hours, or whatever, then that's fine" and FTE is exactly the way to do that!
I just came across this four corners episode from 2016 which has the quote
"According to Holden management 90% of the workers earn between 43k and 55k per year" (https://youtu.be/CIRuU8qot3s?t=33m08s)
Straight from the horses mouth, as it were. Though of course .5FTE @ $43k is $86k FTE (for example) so we're back at the problem of standardization...
However, I think while it would be revealing in some areas, it would mask other problems.
For instance, if you look purely at the FTE, you wouldn't see that George had worked 60 hours. That's a problem. Why did George work 60 hours? Was he really productive for all of that time or is he gaming the overtime system by deliberately doing less work within normal hours so that he has to do overtime to complete his scheduled work.
Definitely all related though. In this case to bring it round to the start, I am focusing on the “how much does the average worker earn” problem. I have a little experience is human resource budgeting for a small team, and my establishment was represented in FTE.
Thanks for the chat, it was interesting.
It was really neat to see a uniquely Aussie car culture that felt really vibrant. I loved that El Caminos and Rancheros, long gone in the US, were alive and well as Holden and Ford Falcon Utes. It was neat that Toyota had its own Camry-ish car, called the Aurion, made in Australia. It was neat that Pontiac in the US was getting the Commodore, which was a great-looking car. Even though it was still Ford, GM, and Toyota on some corporate level, they had their own unique thing that I was able to discover while I was there.
All that said, the transition away is going to have a high human cost, particularly in Adelaide which just doesn't have a whole lot else going economically. But my wife used to work for a Ford supplier in Melbourne, and that city has managed to absorb Ford's shutdown a few years ago without too much pain. (Nearby Geelong, though, had both the main factory and a steel mill, and is having a harder time.)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-compa...
http://reneweconomy.com.au/australian-fossil-fuel-subsidies-...
By comparison the car industry only received about 5 Billion over 10 years:
https://theconversation.com/factcheck-do-other-countries-sub...
It was 5 billion over ten years compared with nearly 5 billion each year.
When you do that comparisons it is a mere 5 billion.
Now I'm not arguing that governments should be propping up sectors with pork barrelling. That is something for the electorate to decide.
However, the current government always claimed they had to stop propping up the car industry, because governments should not be in the business of handing out subsidies.
That government statement is disingenuous and total hypocrisy, since they will not be removing those coal, oil and mining subsides any time soon.
Also: "Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar will receive subsidies of up to $2.8 billion a year up to 2030 to ensure Australia reaches its Renewable Energy Target, according to new research." [1]
1. http://www.afr.com/news/politics/renewable-energy-subsidies-...
I'm more concerned about what will happen when the long-running property bubble pops, because this is propping up huge swathes of the economy (construction, banking, etc) and a lot of people have made financially insane decisions as a result. Lots of people in their twenties holding multi-million property portfolios, where rental income doesn't even cover mortgage payments, because all you need to do is get on the "property ladder" and watch real estate prices go up 15% a year forever...
And, uh, Norway is diversifying its economy, instead of doubling-down on resource extraction. It's not actively de-industrializing.
Wish my own government here in Australia had the brains and chutzpah to do this a few years back. We've never been much cop when it comes to visionary economics (apart from, arguably, rum being our first legal currency).
(1) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/norway-s-...
It's about 10% of the size of Norway's so not especially impressive but it does exist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Government_Future_F...
Half of Europe was bombed, butchered or destroyed 75 years ago, the other half was enslaved or otherwise ruled by dictators for a generation.
China was tortured by several of the colonial powers, the Japanese, and then Mao. It's the world's #2 economy today.
Japan was flattened and nuked. It's the world's #3 economy today.
Germany was destroyed, split in half, and impoverished on one half for two generations. It's the world's #4 economy today.
South Korea survived a horrific civil war and Japanese occupation. Starting from intense poverty just 50 years ago - $150 per capita GDP - it now has the world's #11 economy.
And so on.
After the end of the Korean War 1950 - 53, South Korea was the absolute last on the planet in terms of GDP. Poorer than most of the poorer nations.
And remember the trauma of having gone through a conventional warfare that went up and down the peninsula about 4 time. Not some guerrilla warfare where a neighborhood here and there goes up in smoke but a good old WW1 style warfare of massive artillery barrages.
And before the Korean War, Korea was largely a place stuck in the 19th century, with no modern education or institutions to speak of.
In 64 years, they educated the population, built up basic economy, and than kept on advancing.
Same story in Western Germany; massive investments from the West to prevent them from turning to the Soviet block.
And so on. Don't oversimplify History.
While the distances between the towns in Australia is massive, most of our population resides in a handful of urban coastal cities.
While car culture is historically dominant, the biggest cities are all seriously trending towards increased densification, and much of our substantial immigration over the past 2 decades had been from nations used to much denser living.
I leave open the question as to whether it is the answer to all societies problems, but it would be a brave man to proclaim that wasn't the way Australian cities and population hadn't been trending for the past 10 years, and we'll likely trend for at least the next 10.
Public transport from the suburbs to anywhere but the city or somewhere directly on the way, is terrible.
Will we have better cars that are less polluting, safer, even self driving? Sure. Will we get rid of personal motorised transportation? No.
> Will we have better cars that are less polluting, safer, even self driving?
Sure, whatever. Considering the huge amount of pollution that goes into just creating the car, it is silly to talk about less polluting. Safe? Yeah, that why the road toll is going up. Self driving? Can't come soon enough, since people are incapable of concentrating long enough and are too selfish to drive safely.
Private cars are a stupid idea, and have caused way more problems.
I will add in addition to my above post, that our high property prices are additionally feeding an additional densification trend...
You can google for "Australian Census 2016 quick stats" and get this information for most places in Australia.
Where I currently live is very atypical for Aus, about 75% of households here have 1 or fewer cars, but I've lived pretty much up and down the entire east coast and have a relatively intimate knowledge of both this country and the collection of information on it.
As Russel Coight might say: "I've bend around this wide brown land, seen a thing or two..."
Looking at aust-wide and state by state, it's as I described, at most (in wa and tas) 18% with 3+ cars, but 60+% fall into 1 or 2 cars per household. The rest is no car and no answer.
For completeness, one also has to ask whether or why we measure or comment using the statistical concept of households or persons.
Using WA as an example, ~34% of households had 2 cars. We can say that ~56% of households responded that they had access to 2+ cars. We can also say that almost ~75% of households responded that they had with 2 or fewer cars.
However, if we want to come up with an idea of a "representative australia" (an arguably increasingly erroneous concept by the day), we have to realise that the distribution of "people" amongst households will not be uniform.
Indeed, there is likely a strong correlation between the number of people in a household and the number of cars in a household.
What this means is that although only 56% of "households" reported having 2+ cars, the number of "persons" who experience life in such a household is not proportionate to the number of households reporting each characteristic in the population.
Indeed, given that one stat is likely correlated with singles, students and dinks, and the later is likely correlated with early and extended families, you would likely find that on a population weighted basis, the 2-3 car households may need to be counted as some multiple of the single/no car households.
But people here are too addicted to them, and couldn't even imagine going down to the shops without a car. And make lots of excuses about it, such as it is too far and too big.
And from personal experience I can tell you that any argument of not needing a car goes out the window as soon as someone has kids. Discussion over. Unless you're volunteering to cart around all the shit parents take with them?
Also, just down the road its accompanying power plant/coal mine:
Mining is only 8.5% of Australia's GDP and 2% of its employment. Sure, it would suck for a few years if the whole sector vanished overnight, but it wouldn't cause long-term devastation.
That document lists 51GT of 'accessible economically demonstrated' iron ore, with an production rate of 0.81GT per annum, and 86GT of inferred resources (ie. yet-to-be-prospected).
So there's at least half a century of ore left, even if production ramps-up steadily. 1% prospected doesn't seem supportable though; it's more in the range of 50% based on the ratio of the inferred to known figures above.
Australia will become the largest natural gas exporter - it will overtake iron ore in value in the next couple of years.
Then you have tourism, education and becoming the food bowl for China's growing middle class
Everyone likes to complain about being resource-export dependent but it has never been more than ~10% of GDP and is quiet an enviable position to be in
The next wave of AI-driven manufacturing will decentralize things and you may well see this plant re-opened, albeit without people.
The other 'famously Australian' car manufacturer is Ford. Indeed.
The kinds of (Australian) people that find cars interesting tend to polarise between these two manufacturers, adopting the beliefs that it's patriotic, and that it can be economic to produce (in most cases components were built overseas but assembled within AU) cars in Australia. A country with breathtakingly high labour costs, small population, and low population density. Specifically a relatively small market, container shipping costs flatten out across the country.
That the designs of allegedly Australian cars, even recently, have focused on ICE sedans hasn't helped, though that presumably ties in with the nostalgia aspect for potential consumers of those types of vehicles.
The Monthly published[1] an exquisitely written article middle of last year, describing the history of the Australian car industry, and the self-sabotage exhibited. It's a depressingly sober read.
[1] https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/may/1462024800/rich...
- Spain: Is there anything other than SEAT, which is part of VW?
- Brazil: I think they assemble a lot of cars, but I don't think I've heard of a local company, despite there being an Brazilian aircraft maker.
OTOH, Tata Motors Cars would make India count, right?
The difference is Sweden sells cars all over the world, and in Australia despite decades of attempts and popular Top Gear segments they could never convince anybody else to buy an Australian car
This is a tough issue for me because I consider myself a liberal, and in theory I am OK with globalization but it obviously has negatively impacted many economies in similar ways.
I want to be pro-globalization but to me you really only have two (vastly simplified) options:
1. Be more isolationist or micromanage global trade to maintain your own industries even though they can't compete globally. 2. Find a way to make globalization benefit everyone, not just the owners of companies who can cut costs and increase profits. This most likely means some kind of universal income and large education investment and vocational training built on top of the profits of globalization.
We appear to be moving towards #1 and I'm afraid we'll all suffer as a result.
My biggest issue with globalization is that, while it makes sense in theory, in practice most of the "efficiencies" come from dirt cheap labor due to exchange rates, poor workers rights and working conditions, and lack of environmental regulations (among others). Not because other countries have developed better ways to make things better or faster, they can just abuse their workers in a way they can't here. You would think we would all benefit in some ways even if we're just consumers by cheaper goods, but are they really cheaper or cheap enough to offset the reduction in good jobs? Does anyone know of some good data-sources for the prices of consumer goods vs household income over time? My guess is our purchasing power has gone down in general for the middle-class.
I can see honestly how this issue has given rise to nationalism in America, I somehow hoped that people would see that isolationism is not the answer and we instead need to rethink our economic model. Somehow Americans have been sold (among many other things) that something like universal income is a handout. I'm afraid we'll take the route that the UK is moving towards of being poorer overall and reducing globalization out of spite without it actually benefiting us.
I feel like as a liberal in America I live in a game of political jenga. Want to stop abortions? We can only do it in a way that doesn't involve decent sex ed or contraceptives (which leads to personal responsibility). Want to prevent gun massacres? We can only do it in a way that doesn't restrict access to guns at all and doesn't cost any money (which leads to more personal responsibility). Want to help out those impacted by globalization or those who have never been on sound economic footing? We can only do that in ways that don't involve wealth redistribution (which pretty much means personal responsibility of people to despite the fact that that already happens in many ways (so we're left with more personal responsibility and people like Shannon are responsible for a late-in-life pivot to a new job with anemic vocational assistance).
A lot of the people that have been hurt by globalization are the same people that support the party in our system that has taken most of the solutions to our problems totally of the table. We're in a straightjacket and could get out any of 10 ways but those would involve tools, all of which are (claimed to be) morally/philosophically unacceptable.
I know this was a rant but its been stewing since I read the first NYT article and this one just compounds it.
By any global metric you look at globalization is doing amazingly. "A U.N. goal to halve the poverty rate in the developing world between 1990 and 2015 was nearly achieved twice over."[1].
The whole process of relaxing limitations on trade has been a huge boost for developing countries who are currently on a runaway growth trajectory. E.g. look at the GDP growth graphs for the developed v.s. developing world in this[2] article.
Yes we could do better, but it's already great. Yes as some jobs move to developing countries people in developed countries are temporarily displaced, but there's no suggestion that we can't continually recover from that situation.
After all our societies aren't overflowing with jobless ex-steelworkers, ex-textile workers or any other industry you might want to name which has predominantly moved abroad.
Instead we continue to lead the charge in economic development, but because of globalization we're increasingly dragging the rest of the world with us.
1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/01/20/the-globa...
2. https://oneinabillionblog.com/energy/energy-policy/a-common-...
I don't see any way to micromanage the economy and to pull away from the world and have it actually benefit us, I might not have made clear that I don't consider that to be an actual option. I think its nuts that increasing taxes on those who benefit massively from globalization is a total non-starter and might lead us to disaster. In fact, we're about to potentially slash taxes on those same people and cut services to the rest of the country, we're moving totally backwards and the divide is just going to get larger.
So on the one hand, people losing their jobs is a shame but I wouldn't reorient our entire economy just to make sure people can still have factory jobs, but at the same time its up to us as a society whether or not simply losing your job because of changes in the global marketplace is a life-altering disaster or simply something we all deal with together.
In the US you don't need universal income. Universal healthcare and free education would be massive wealth redistribution programs.
In fact, the ACA (ObamaCare) for all it's flaws still is a wealth redistribution program.
So if you fix your political system, it could happen...
I agree we don't yet have a good plan on how to give people access good jobs globally. I think it is just going to be a challenge until we can get automation to a really high level and power costs super low with solar so things don't really cost. Then UBI and service jobs (if you want them) might work. Very interesting to contemplate though..
That being said, people also need to get over the idea of having a forver factory job, I understand and empathize with people who suffer as a result but culturally we've got to get over it and take care of each other and move on (I think).
Globalisation is not OK because arbitrage of cost of living, regulations, etc. The solution is tarriffs to even it out. Want to ship the factory overseas? OK, but there will be no financial advantage in it because the profits will be taxed away and the price will end up the same anyway. That's fair.
This seemed to be the point of the TPP, whether it was flawed or not, to set some kind of standards that would allow us to compete on a more level playing field.
Theoretically I think it is expected that things will level out eventually, as a nation like China has a economic revolution the people become wealthier and eventually they aren't a cheap manufacturing solution anymore and factories move somewhere else and so on and so forth. That is why I feel like taking some of the profits from globalization and investing them into a) our own people and b) environmental and human rights in the countries we do business is the best, least wasteful solution that doesn't assume we can solve an NP-Complete problem in polynomial time.
1. Australian federal and state government spent billions to save the car industry. AUD$2.7 billion tax payer's hard earned $ was spent between 2001-2013.
2. Unions asked for huge pay rises every single year. For example, in 2011, they forced car manufacturers to provide 18.3% pay rise in 3 years, that is 6% a year non-stop for 3 years.
3. Car makers were forced to continue to provide pay rises when they were weighting the decision whether to shut down their production in Australia.
Take a look at the following The Australian article, you'd probably feel happy that you don't have such unions screwing local economy in your country.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pay-rises-a...
Australian is an unique country, a ticket inspector makes $100k AUD a year ($80K USD) from his/her unskilled job. With such background in mind, it is not hard to imagine how much you need to pay those workers to build cars.
Australian government couldn't subsidise cars that where losing sales year on year to smaller cheaper to run cars.
GM just wanted the handouts to keep it running when that dry up they pull the pin
John Cadogan is a bloke that called the end of the Australian Car Manufacturing many years ago and has a great video on why it died here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uFYW5tMoeg
I was with a Tier 1 supplier in Australia before transferring to Germany, the market place is so different. Looking back, it's a wonder that it actually lasted this long.
oh god why?
Australia has tonnes of gas but unlike USA has not transformed that to cheap energy and the industries that come with it.
It got to the stage where when buying cars, people I knew would check the VINs to ensure that they were not made in Australia.
Fords made in Australia were particularly bad. Toyotas made in Australia were not up to the standards of the Japanese built Toyotas, but were far better than the pieces of rubbish turned out by the Australian subsidaries of American firms.
Driving one of the US branded cars, was like having a big sign saying " I am a bogan"
Australian slang for chav / redneck
I always think it should say - there are some workers who've been cruising for 30 or so years and picking up a pay packet without reskilling. They probably won't be able to get a job without spending a bit of time learning some marketable skills
Edit: Down votes. Really? I give up.
I'd expect a polite request for help getting around the paywall probably would've been much more warmly received.
Make sure to ctrl-W when you're done.
Firefox: clear history when Firefox closes (including clearing cookies and cache). Also NoScript: no JS allowed on NYT website
For real laughs, an earlier incarnation of NYT paywall allowed access to everything except for the editorials. Wow. Talk about tone deaf. If there's anything from the NYT I would pay for it would be to block all their editorials.