Jerry_Atrick

Didn't the taxpayer gift QANTAS well during COVID and they illegally fired a bunch of people anyway?

Well, no but aoart from say the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra - most don't have their roots in privatisation of such recognisable brands. But almst all excet the consultancies have a strong claim to being Australian birn and bred and in a spirit of being Australian that is pivotal to their emotional marketing. Most aso market heavily in their contribution to Australian society. So the fact one has a catchhrase the spirit of Australia does not mean that they ar the only ones trying to market the same message in differnt ways. Absolutely. All pollies should not be allowed to join the Chariman's club based on a conflict of interest. Even in the allegedly more corrupt UK, those sort of pers are against Erskine's rules of parliament (the closest thing to a written constitution the UK has). Then decisions such as not allowing QATAR Arlines to fly to Australia shortly after COVID lockdowns were dropped would have less of an air of biased protection, Of course, the biggest protection is no government nor the ACCC are going to force the airport operators to surrender a portion of QANTAS slots and gates to other airlines to brig in true competition, Allwe have now is, in reality, a two airline system we always had, but with companies making profits. But, I accept that the pricing has improve significantly for the consumer. But this got me thinking. Is this short term bonuses to the execs that the journos are all writing about? I am sure part of it is that.. but I am also sure there is a longer term plan. QANTAS is a publicly listed airline. In order for it to continue to provide a return to its shareholders, it has to provide growth. One of the problems QANTAS has is it is generally an expensive airline. That is OK in Australia for two reasons. Firstly, the cost of doing business in Australia makes QANTAS competitive to Virgin Aus or Blue or whatever it is called today. The brand loyalty and sheer capacity over its competitor makes it formidable in Australia even if it costs a bit more.. That brand loyality is really strong in Australia. But its route model is one that is based around flying people domestically and flying people between the rest of the world and Australia. That means the market is somewhat capped. An to be honest, QANTAS is usually far more expensive than the other airlines getting you from the rest of the word to Australia. In this trip and the last, the cheapest non-code shared trip was double the price of QATAR last time and Singapore this time. Double! Even before I shredded brand loyalty thanks to the move of maintenance overseas, when I went to QANTAS first, I wouldn't take that much of a hit. I could have got code share flying some airline I wouldn't normally to the middle east and then QANTAS from there, I think.. There is no doubt a bit of profiteering and yes, Joyce gutted the company, which was driven largely by short termism. However, the only way I can see QANTAS growing in anything more than too much CPI once the short term cost reductions are made is to grow its international network. That is difficult enough due to capacity constraints globally, but impossible with a high cost base that has to make a profit. For example the last time I flew from London to San Francisco was with JAL. That's right, a Japanese airline. Their model is (or was) routes all over the world. Unless I was doing multi-city, no one is going to take o flight of the route to get from Tokyo to San Francisco and back. They may integrate it into their trunk routes, but it is designed to be a service from London to the USA. In order to improve growth in the future, QANTAS execs may be thinking they need to expand their routes to attract pax not intending to visit Australia. As these people are likely not Australian, they have no brand loyalty (generally - I do know a couple of yanks that will only fly QANTAS when the route supports it - thanks to Rainman). So, in order for Australia to compete on the big stage, it has to lower costs to it can price v quality compete The obvious is to move back office ops to a cheaper location and automate as much as possible.. That is my alternate theory.

Th QANTAS (or iIMHO, QANTARSE) shipping 840 jobs off to India (and hiding the fact there was an AI element) seems to hve created a bit of a backlash. But this is not the first time they have done it and won't be the last. In fact, the earliest I know of was in the mid 90s with Telstra offshoring a lot of its information technology jobs, too. So I asked chat to generate me a table of private and publicly listed Australian companies that have off-shored jobs from Australia. Its context response is: "I’ll consolidate this into one table and distinguish four measures: Australian roles transferred, offshore staff hired to support Australian operations, proposed transfers, and jobs brought back onshore. I’ll exclude global headcounts unless there is evidence they serve Australian operations." Here is the table: So offshoring not necessarily that bad, but look at the second table - People they outright hire overseas to support Aussie operations. .which means rather than create the job here, create it somewhere else. Also, note that there are a couple of offshoring initiatives I know of that are missing, so this is an understatement. Consider there are no resource/mining companies in that mix. And the QANTAS maintenance outsourcing.. So, I would suggest the numbers are a lot higher than the above and a decent more number of companies Also consider that there have been foreign takeovers of Aussie companies that may have shipped jobs O/S before the takeover but certainly did afterwards. And this does not include foreign companies.. e,g, IBM and the like, which no doubt take work in Australia (e.g. build government department a bespoke system) and then ship the work to a low cost destination. I am not saying IBM have done this... it is hypothetical, but it is a good way for the government to get the benefit of cheaper overseas resources without directly offshoring its operations. So, I get the backlash against QANTAS. But, there is a lot more doing and have done so for a long time, And I bet QANTAS are betting, like the backlash when they exported maintenance jobs overseas, it will all die down and because they have the lion's share of the capacity in Australia (airport slots/gates), it will blow over and not materially impact the bottom line And, no other copany on the above list seems to have suffered as a result of that they have done..

The ex colleague I had lunch with yesterday who has been unemployed for some time. She works at the coal face in IT and says at that level, it is now who you know and not what you know. Her last three gigs were as a result of contacts. Some of it is displacement by AI. Some of it is offshored. In the absence of a complete tax overhaul so mega profits can be taxed to support s population for which there will be very few jobs at he coal face, I suggested a tax on jobs offshored (so not technically displaced by AI). If a company has operations in Australia and a job is being performed overseas in direct support of the Australian operations, then the firm should have to pay a tax to cover the displacement of the local working population. For new foreign start ups, they have a year to ramp up their local employment after which the tax will apply. Of course there are some pragmatic hurdles that have to be overcome such as identifying the roles overseas, but governments have put in "solutions" for trickier issues.. I am sure the right brains applied could come up with something no matter how imperfect

My MIL volunteers in an op shop (called charity shop in the UK). They benefit from full relief of business council tax (rates) and of course, largely volunteers (I think there i a paid manager - but they will not be on much money). My MIL said revenues are up since the cost of living crisis, and that people who one would not normally associate with sopping at op shops. I wonder if that is the same here (in Aus as I type ;-))

Had lunch today with an ex work colleague I have not seen since 2005. When she worked with usm she was 20 years old.. She now has a family and is nice and settled. We had 21 years of catch up and it was great to see her again. We had lunch in a cafe in Dorcas street, just around the corner from Clarendon Rod, South Melbourne. Itis a lovely part of Melbourne with old architecture, but nice wide streets. Food was a little pricey, but good quality.. we strolled to a cafe on Clarendon Street and watched the world go by reminiscing about the good old days, having a moan about growing old, etc. The only rel complaint was the parking stasi.. they were in force and swooped quickly in expired motorists. I managed to avoid one but a few seconds. The $105 bill is not that big its about 80 pounds in London these days if you pay it in 14 days and doubles if you pay it in 28. But, where we were, there were plenty of spaces empty.. as there were shops as well.. so I am not sure it was because of the parking fees and fines there was so many spaces. When there are that many, they should probably allow 2 hour free parking - if you stay longer then you get the bill.

Beautiful day in Melbourne, today. Life is good.

It does look dire for Labor. Of course, the only poll that matters is on election day and sometimes when it looks like a drubbing some of the usually faithful that were intending to vote the other way do return, but that is a huge gap - even if it is a biased poll and taken from voters only in the electorate of Hawthorn (where I have only seen signs for the Lib or indepdendent). Thankfully I am no longer on the register (and it's too late to re-register). I would be quit despondent. There really isn't too much different between ALP and LNP in what they are offering. All three of the majors seem to be pretty well corrupt. Haven't heard boo from the Greens... I think I would be going independent.

That should read Monday back in England is going to be fun. I was on a phone at the time, so I can only plead autocorrect (from a typo, anyway)

Hey babe; take a walk on the wild side.

I haven't seen his whole press conference, but everything in that snippet made sense at least to me. Of course, I would go for a complete and radical overhaul of how taxation would work...

Here is someone who has a plan to help people. I haven't seen the whole press conference, but we need more people in politics thinking like this: Note, it is mainly foreign shareholders that really benefit from the current arrangements and yes, business won't like it, but when there's enough money still to be made, they will stay Norway, Qatar, and a host of others have proved it.

I am not meaning to be a sinophobe, but China is positioning itself to be a global superpower like no other. Like the many countries but more recent stark examples such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, they start with a cheap labour force and other factors of production and start manufacturing the basic goods.. almost commoditised types of goods. It is cheap, breaks and generally OK to throw away after a while But then they invest in technology and manufacturing processes and their cheap goods soon become durable and relatively high quality. You only have to look at the Chinese car manufacturing industry to see how that has come leaps and bounds in a very short period of time - about 10 years in major exports (yes, they have had a domestic car industry for much longer time and they have been exporting cars for a longer time, too.. but not at mass scale as today). Certainly in my life time, Australia never really enjoyed comparatively lower costs of labour or other factors of production. So we are always going to struggle to compete. Although there was a vibrant manufacturing sector, it was largely domestic.. Now, China is advancing into the high tech manufacturing and doing a good job of it. But unlike the other countries named, there are two major differences: the population and size of the economy as its wealth from exports increases.. and the government still has largely autocratic control and it decides on the allocation of resources, unlike western type economies where managers focusing on the short term share price and bonuses as a result decide the allocation of resources. And the Chinese government plans for the long term. With a cashed up government thanks to exports and control over industry, China is perfectly placed rise to be the (not a) global superpower. That is a little dramatic but not improbable. Sorry for the thread drift.

No so good for union apparently https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-11-09/live-updates-england-vs-wallabies-nations-championship/107351328?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other And according to the article, England have beaten Australia 12 of yhe last 14 times. Money back in England is not going to be fun

Old time rock and roll