Oz Local manufacturing

[kdx Geoff]

Our Politicians should hang their heads in shame ! 

Not just this lot but generations of them that have let our manufacturing ability of cars diminish to unviability.

Holden's shut down reasons have been cited as the dollar, production costs and market size, all things controlled by the reserve bank, government costs/taxes and unions haven't always been helpful (while Rome burns http://www.caradvice.com.au/141246/toyota-australia-unions-locked-in-negotiations-to-resolve-pay-dispute/) and the government again.

'Automotive industry assistance is now modest and transparent. Let's be clear: every car-making nation supports its industry and at a far greater level than Australia. In the US it is $264 a person, in Germany $90 a person and in Australia just $18. Today, tariff protection is at 5 per cent, a fraction of what it was in the early 1980s. Because Australia has entered into free trade agreements with other car-making countries, this tariff does not even apply to many imported vehicles.'  (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/fate-of-holden-up-to-abbott/story-e6frgd0x-1226780117064#)

I'm sure the tens of thousands of people and their families that have been retrenched because Mitsubishi, Ford, Holden and soon to be included Toyota have ceased to manufacture in Australia (and all the part/ component suppliers) are delighted that our Country is such a fair player on the world stage of automotive manufacture.

Protect and assist our local automotive industry ? l think its a bit late now 

[smed]

Are we all gonna be driving CHOLDENS in a few years

[Moto]

 My main concern for the future is the security of our country.
We don't make steel,ships,planes,cars,whitegoods or even push bikes anymore.
Without manufacturing we must import everything.If this happy world we live in ever has a major shift,we are sitting ducks.
Oh thats right we just ring America and were saved.

[FourstrokeForever]

I feel so sorry for the workers having to face the shock of no more work after 2017. No doubt many will be gone before then. What a great government we have. First thing the Prime Minister wants is BMW's for the pollies. BASTARD! Why don't they buy the cheap crappy asian cars that ruined our auto industry instead of buying lavish luxury cars that WE PAY FOR.
Qantus will be the next to go, along with Toyota. Paul Keating was right...we are doomed to become a banana republic. And to think Australia once had a reputation for making some of the best "stuff" in the world. Now all we make are big friggin holes in the ground and a deteriorating environment, with no benefit to Australians or Australia.
How the fluck are they going to pay for all the welfare that is about to happen?
And what happened to the futures fund that Peter Costello so conveniently invested where Aussies can't see it. And what the hell was it for.... Oh, that's right. To pay all the superannuation costs of retiring politicians. Shame Australian government, SHAME

[lama]

we have all been told that we will need to supply the world with food so there,s a good money making scheme but we are selling all the farms to the chinks (maybe they think there,s a dollor to be made there in the next few years)WAKE UP CANBERRA         

[FourstrokeForever]

we have all been told that we will need to supply the world with food so there,s a good money making scheme but we are selling all the farms to the chinks (maybe they think there,s a dollor to be made there in the next few years)WAKE UP CANBERRA         

It'd be funny if it wasn't so true. The food bowl of the world my arse.... All the fruit growers in Shepparton and surrounds have gone to the wall and have ripped up all their hard work that has been in families for generations. The last of our canneries closed down thanks to a take over by US company CocaCola Amitil. OS "investors" send their own livestock back home and the money that goes with it. Our veggie farmers are pushed to breaking point by foreign owned companies pretending to be their best friend. Our natural gas is sold for the next 20 years to china for bugger all while our LPG just went up by 30%. It's my friggin gas in my friggin ground and I want it back seeing as we, the population of Australia, get nothing out of it. Our town doesn't even have gas connected even though a pipeline full of the stuff is less than 1 kilometer away from my house. We don't even have potable drinking water for fluck sake. Wouldn't providing these resources to our own country towns make sense and deliver jobs? Oh yeah, that will cost the government money so we can't do that. We need to show fiscal restraint while we send all our resources elsewhere so "they" can grow and prosper.
Where's the INVESTMENT in THIS country you greedy BASTARDS???

[huskibul]

       Pollies couldnt  a rats about whats going on out in the boondocks! selling the farm off wouldnt effect their smug  lives one iota - thei glass castles are forever payed for 

[GMC]

Now let me get this straight,

we remove tariffs to make a free trade agreement with countries so that we can export cars to them…

… but we can’t compete with countries that have low wages so our car industry folds and we now have no cars to export.

There’s some forward planning for you!

Next we will put the tariffs back on making all new cars even more expensive but we won’t have any local cars because it’s too hard to ‘jump start’ the industry again!

[FourstrokeForever]

That's pretty much the sum of it Geoff...

I don't know if tariffs will ever be re-introduced but you can bet your balls that the price of these imported will go up now that they see a chink in the armour. Don't worry, you won't lose so you'll still have something to scratch in the morning.

I wonder what the bleeding hearts think of the illegal immigrants coming to our shores now. There's no jobs to be had for the population that is here already, let alone tens of thousands more every year. We can't even go fruit picking anymore because there is no fruit to pick.

And while ever our good friends in the "states" are printing money to keep their economy afloat and their dollar worthless, things aren't going to get any better. And to think Ms Hansen was ridiculed when she suggested we print more money to help with the woes the nation was in at the time......

[Tim754]

(and all the part/ component suppliers)   That is the Huge one people. 

 Korean, Indian & Chinese crap,  Yes crap Indian and Chinese but 98% of the Korean stuff sold now is not junk.

 You got a tough Jappo 4X4 ute from Tioyota,  Tiazda/Thord, Tissan, Tholden, TIzuzu, TiTubish...i  ever heard of Thailand  .

[VMX247]

(and all the part/ component suppliers)   That is the Huge one people.

Cleaners,canteen,freight and Australian Racing scene the flow on effect is massive   

[Lozza]

Mad Pauline showed just how far out of touch her opinions were when she went to clink herself, her opinions on that did a complete 180 deg turn. She would have been fantastic if you liked 150% inflation and our major trading partners ceasing to do business with Australian companies. Clive Palmer is only in politics to get his own way and benefit himself, he is chock a block full of shit. He has yet to string a coherent sentence or answer together on even one of his policiies.
Don't worry about the 1000 asylum seekers as there is 20,000 or so legal migrations to Australia each year most of them from NZ and the UK

The follow-on to the car industry failing will be massive , even down to a small company that it did a job at that made the testing machines for the steering column controls for Ford/Holden. The real crisis will be when the Chinese decide we need to pay 'market prices' for our underpants or whatever is at Bunnings

[Davey Crocket]

If Abbot and his party let this happen, they will get there arses kicked at the next election....if they put a tariff back on every shitbox imported car that came into this country of say a $1000 and then used that to prop up the motor industry here it probably wouldn't cost them SFA. We sell a million new cars in Australia a year, about 800,000 are imports...times that by a $1000 and you have a nice little kitty to keep AUSTRALIAN'S employed....do we really need those shit boxes from China (full of asbestos....gee, that's a surprise), India and all those other "cheap" cars for sale in our country?...I don't think so....people fought two world wars to give us freedom and to make this a great country that it is and now through piss weak polititans they have given it all away. Look how farked Europe is.....we are going down the same path. Spain when it was a great nation and under the control of Franko had rules.....nearly everything in Spain was either made there or a very high percentage of the product being produced was.....everyone had a job and the country was wealthy....now look at it with this free trade bullshit. The Asians would have been popping champagne bottles last night....because they know our government has just screwed us over and they will benefit from it. What I don't get is a few short years ago Holden was the only part of the GM corporation that was viable and making a profit, they took all the top people from us to fix there other divisions and gave us a dickhead to fark the company and now there are shutting us down. Bring back Pauline. 50,000 plus on the dole is going to cost us tax payers a fortune, let alone what it will do to the economy. The silly thing is, Holden will loose even more market share now as people rebel against them closing down, it happened with Nissan and Mitsubishi when they did it.

[SlideRulz]

It's hard not to get emotional with the loss of Ford and now Holden but it was inevitable.
We will never be able to compete against the Asian countries in the mass production of anything, we should be moving in the direction of producing high quality after market spares and accesories.
Throwing good money after bad doesn't make sense to me, that money is desperately needed in other areas.
Agriculture resources is where our future lays.
None of the V8 engines used in the supercars are made in OZ anyway.

[Rookie#1]

Makes ya wonder doesn't it, seems the organizers of the "Australian" V8 super cars championship saw this happening a lot longer ago than everyone else and adjusted their series accordingly so as that it doesn't collapse along with the discounting of Australian built models.