Oz Local manufacturing

[suzuki59]

Nathan I know "someone " who works for the other large Australian steel manufacturer  (name starts with the letter "O") and the money the guys  make in the mills is over AUD$100K pa.
There's no doubt it's hot horrible conditions in the summer and can be slightly dangerous albeit it's far safer than the 1980"s.
The Australian steel industry is competing against modern Asian mills who typically have their electricity subsidised along with the employee pay rates being probably one tenth of those equivalent roles in Australia.
It is also fact that a lot of the Asian mills and the trading houses that represent them in Australia are happy to sell product in this market lower than their home countries - otherwise known as dumping.
Makes for a pretty ugly existence given the strength of the Australian dollar on the greenback.

[bazza]

 Unzud has supermarket profits go back to Australia - and bank profits (except one new NZ bank) same profits back to Auz. Our wages have fallen way behind Australia. Now as you go deep in recession and the East wants your markets (manufacturing) Welcome to our world.

[Nathan S]

Nathan I know "someone " who works for the other large Australian steel manufacturer  (name starts with the letter "O") and the money the guys  make in the mills is over AUD$100K pa.

Back in the late 90s, I knew a bloke who worked for BHP Steel as an operator. He was on ~$75k/year then. Presumably, if the job still exists, it's paying at least $100k now...

The more I think about it, the more I think that the real issue is wages vs housing affordability (including rent) - and that anyone who focuses only on "excessive" wages needs to be treated with great suspicion.
Personally, we live very simply, with a keen on our bang-for-buck (our newest car is 13 years old, most of our clothing comes from the op shop, 90% of our groceries come from Aldi, etc. We are forever despairing at the way various friends spend money on luxuries while complaining about how tough they're doing it...).
With a smaller than average mortgage, and two incomes (both around the national average), we get by just fine.
But if we were to try to feed four mouths on either one of our incomes, we would be financially paralysed - the bills could be paid, but there wouldn't be much money left ovr for the fun stuff... If interest rates returned to their Howard-era average, then there would be no money left over for the fun stuff.

http://economics.hia.com.au/media/House%20price%20to%20income%20ratio%20-%20FINAL.pdf
Noting the conclusions in this, housing was less affordable under Howard's "record low" interest rates than it was under Keating's sky high interest rates...

Perhaps we do need a recession to burst the housing bubble... It's very hard to be excited about the misery a recession causes, but property prices are continuing to climb... They had levelled off for a couple of years there (2010ish), which meant they were dropping in relative terms. This would have been the ideal outcome (a "soft landing"), but it needed to run for a decade or so to make a real difference. Instead, it looks as though we are headed for a crash landing.