If truckies carry this country.....

[spacesailor]

One manufacturing plant in Australia was ! As Darwin almost got invaded .

Dismantled & shipped to Wellington NZ .For safety, ' the Glycerine Refinery ' . 

It Stayed in Wellington forever! .

spacesailor

 

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

Pete, the history of Australia is written large in the stories of exceptionally wealthy overseas investors being the only ones with enough money to develop the resources we have here, or to manufacture here.

So true. My gripe though, is that we have not sensibly sold off our resources.

 

The profits made by these overseas 'investors'  could have provided sufficient funds to pay for our own economic growth.

 

As it is, the continuing system is for enterprising big overseas businesses see a great profit here, and their only motive is to stay until the money runs out.

 

Compare that with Norway's  soverign wealth fund.

 

".....the world's largest single sovereign wealth fund in terms of total assets under management."

 

Achieved by more careful exploitation of natural resources.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, nomadpete said:

the continuing system is for enterprising big overseas businesses see a great profit here, and their only motive is to stay until the money runs out.

That's the formula for the creation of a banana republic.

 

You have to remember, too, that a population of 27M does not create a domestic market that promotes a manufacturing sector, but the application of technology means that 27M can support very profitable raw material production.

 

I have been thinking about the exchange rate of the Australian dollar against the currencies of our trading partners. New Zealand seems to be the only country where one unit of our currency buys a fraction more than the other's. In Jan 23 the AUD was trading around 0.70 USD. on 24/12/24 it was trading at o.62 USD. That's a 12% decrease, which means that our imports are 12% dearer. 

[pmccarthy]

Elphinstone underground loaders in Burnie, sold to Caterpillar. Horwood Bagshaw in Mannum, Australian since 1838, was sold to CNH, an American-Italian multinational, a few years ago. Freighter Industries sold to Maxicube in 1998.

[nomadpete]

30 minutes ago, old man emu said:

You have to remember, too, that a population of 27M does not create a domestic market that promotes a manufacturing sector

That is a problem, for sure.

 

But a counter argument is the fact that post WW2, Japan didn't start mass motor vehicle manufacturing for their domestic market of the time. Yes, they had help, but in the end it worked out well for them with a nice lil global earner.

 

In our case, we would have to have long term plans,  but could it be possible if we started value adding to our coal and iron ore, to manufacture products for overseas markets.

 

Otherwise our services based economy will collapse when other countries find cheaper places to get raw material.

Edited December 27, 2024 by nomadpete

[nomadpete]

16 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

Elphinstone underground loaders in Burnie, sold to Caterpillar. Horwood Bagshaw in Mannum, Australian since 1838, was sold to CNH, an American-Italian multinational, a few years ago. Freighter Industries sold to Maxicube in 1998.

That sounds to me like plain capitalist globalisation. After all they don't generally buy up a business unless it makes money for the buyer.

 

I have heard it called neo-feudalism. Where a few billionaires are created by a few billion nervous poor workers.

Edited December 27, 2024 by nomadpete

[nomadpete]

37 minutes ago, old man emu said:

You have to remember, too, that a population of 27M does not create a domestic market that promotes a manufacturing sector

It occurs to me this well worn axium might not always hold up.

 

How many motor vehicle brands were manufactured in UK back in 1950?

And that was in a nation that had a population of only 50 million. Compared with our almost 30 million - not such a big difference!

 

[old man emu]

35 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

How many motor vehicle brands were manufactured in UK back in 1950?

And that was in a nation that had a population of only 50 million. Compared with our almost 30 million - not such a big difference!

 

But the motor vehicle industry grew on the foundations of a century-old manufacturing sector. Motor vehicles were just another product. The same can be said for the British aviation industry.  What about the production of portable digital devices? Fifty years ago most of those types of products were only in the development stage, at best. However, once the designs were established countries with an existing manufacturing basis started to produce them, or set up manufacturing centres where the costs of infrastructure and labour were less than in the designer's home land.

[nomadpete]

Well, back in the 70's UK manufactured early desktop computers, and over here we had two companies manufacturing (and selling) cutting edge semiconductors. 

 

These were totally new industries - everyone had to start from scratch to do this at the time. So it started out as a level playing field.

 

Then Globalisation found cheaper ways to make profits so the smaller industries died out.

 

I think we had the R & D but never had the long term investors required to set up a competetive manufacturing base.

 

For instance the japanese planned a generation or two ahead of the west. Short term hardship for longer term benefits.

 

[pmccarthy]

Finland and Sweden have been global exporters of mining equipment for decades, off modest populations.

[Jerry_Atrick]

There are many countries, the USA included that formed the foundations of their money from foreign capital. However, many governments of those economies implemented positive policies to ensure that the wealth from their land, and others, was used to grow domestic ownership and wealth. If you look at the US, one it's state and then federal economies grew to a critical mass, it would, as a government, prefer to buy American, and it continues today: https://www.madeinamerica.gov/

 

In most middle eastern countries, you cannot have completely foreign owned firms - they have to have a minimum amount of domestic ownership. When I worked in Abu Dhabi (thankfully only for two weeks), it was 50% domestic ownership. It was a license for the domestic population to print money. This was changed in 2020: https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2020/12/uae-to-allow-full-foreign-ownership-of-companies

 

The Albanese government promised a Buy Australian policy, but apart from some vague reference to it in the ALP website, I cannot find anything official in guidance or law from any state or federal government sites, or any reference to it in procurement guides for suppliers.

 

I find it crazy how we have (or had) some of the best ertiary engineering and science courses, an abundance of materials, yet our culture is not one of drive and entrepreneurship beyonf getting a flesging company mature enough to sell to the highest foreign bidder. There are many countries with similar or more challenging profiles to ours that have home grown manufacturing, and properly ensure foreign multinationals pay their share of taxes and royalties, for things like primary resources, etc, that we seem to give away with gay abandon. 

 

Once someone fixes that, we should be in for a better collective ride.