Bye Bye Holden

Lang I couldnt agree more

We reap what we sow, how can we carry on like the proverbial pork chop when we as citizens of this country wont support our country

We are our own worst enemy, we vote with our hip pocket, shop with our hip pocket we will surly die with our hip pocket in mind

We as Australians are pathetic from our young to the aged we are driven by the almighty dollar and to hell with the consequences

Some people carry on about tariffs and how much extra it made things

So bloody what, you are only shpping with your hip pocket and dont want to support our country, why shouldnt you pay more, you want to free load off the rest of us and screw the country

Think about tariffs this way, people get the opportunity to choose who pays tax
You want to buy imported gear ? Here is a tax bill for not supporting the country
You want to buy Australian, have a free pass

People carry on about import tariffs and dont even know why they were scrapped

I heard my grandfather talk about doing whats right all the time
Whats right for the country, we should put our country first, we owe it that much dont we ? But we dont, we should be ashamed of our selves

So much driven by the dollar we will happily screw over our fellow man and not blink a eye

Paul

Now weres them happy pills ?
I think I almost had a rant going then

Paul

Tariffs are not the answer.

It is like shooting at the enemy - the bullets go both ways.

Tariffs and related use of Subsidies are now illegal under most international trade agreements. If you have tariffs or subsidies your trading partners will apply tariffs or subsidise their industries equally against your exports so in the long run nothing is gained. There are still many of these artificial financial manipulations going on and Australia is not squeaky clean either.

We may impose a new tariff on say, $500,000,000 worth of cars from Japan to protect our now non-existent industry but Japan will respond by placing extra import duties on $500,000,000 worth of Australian coal.

The only way to do it is by buying Australian but we are so self-centred, money-driven and entitled to do or receive anything our heart desires that we will eventually become a mendicant state owned by foreign interests.

Lang

The Australian political debate for 150 years has been free trade vs protectionism.
Unfortunately, free trade favours the mega nations. 'The rich get richer; the poor get poorer, meantime, in between time...'
USA is free to sell to us; we are free to buy from them.
When WA boatbuilder Austal broke into the USA military market, it had to build a factory there, and build its boats there.
Boeing doesn't build aircraft here (but part of the offset agreement is that certain components are created here).

In my lifetime, I have watched countless Australian enterprises sold off to overseas interests. Who remembers Chesty Bond? Macrobertson chocolate? Sunshine Harvester?

When WWII erupted, we could mobilise existing industrial skills, and push them to new horizons.
Now we just couldn't cope, except for the ability to produce an oversupply of coffee latte to fuel our defence corps, and those of most allies.

Roderick

it all raises the question of what will we do for jobs? Most IT is now offshore, no clothing, vehicles etc. A local mob that produces gas tanks for houses and vehicles has almost closed due to imports and the increased costs of local steel since the car makers went and problems with imported steel leaking (very hard to make pressure vessels when you purchase steel that leaks under pressure). It's gone from 100 staff in the factory to 20 and are not replacing office staff if they leave (they were always bare minimum)
Most of the Swap and Go style gas cylinders are now imported with the factory testing 1 in 50 to ensure batch compliance with Australian Standards.
The impact on me is that rather than have about a week of work with them every month it's about a week of work every 12 months and would be less if the parent company's support team would look after the In-house IT systems that they charge the locals to look after!

Part of the trouble is there are too many homeowners living in a fools paradise of values artificially inflated by tax breaks .....The first move would have to be cancelling negative gearing.....Next would be capital gains tax on all sales ........massively unpopular ,for sure ,I dont want to be paying tax .....in fact Im selling out at Willawong to be sure of getting the pre 85 exemption ...which may well be the first concessionto go.

here s a did ja know...Queensland sells millions of tons of coal to England ,of all places. Coal and iron ore support our lifestyle and easy livin economy,and insulate Oz from reality......Heres another didja know......the entire NDIS scheme is infested with carpetbaggers who take 90% of the funding for administrative costs......And the Qld government have tailored their supposed no fault compensation for road accident victims to plunder the NDIS.

.
Well it would seem that we have seen the best part of Australia, are we now on a down hill roll ????????
With the older Australians falling off the perch, do the people coming in as replacements
really care about our old values.???????
Maybe they would like to see things change to their old country values...………..
( that would be normal human behaviour I suppose )
When there is enough of them to take over our parliaments etc , what happens then,
probably not what we would like...……………
How many new people to our country would have even heard of Holden,(for example ).
They would probably go for something that they were familiar with . ( that too would be
normal wouldn't it )
So one would think that (maybe). the future is going to be nothing like what we have worked for.
What about the anniversary of the Darwin attack, we fought to retain it, now the port of Darwin
has virtually been given to the Chinese...………...and so it goes...……...
As I said we are on a down hill roll …………….
……………….Billy...………………...

No doubt 95% of everything you have all said is true.
The problem is that the average person has to do what gives him/her the best value for money. No matter whether they are a taxpayer or not, politically aware or not, altruistic or not, patriotic or not.

I learned this about thirty years ago, before digital TV, when I paid $100 more, that I could ill afford, than the cheapest available to get a top quality set. After seven months the picture disappeared and I took it to the authorised repairer. The repairer said he would have to get a new picture tube from Hong Kong. That appeared to be odd for a european TV, but the repairer assured me that was where the parts came from. After a month, I phoned the importer and told him to either repair my set or give me a new one. He was horrified and said the problem I described was not a fault of the picture tube.
Next day, the repairer phoned to say the TV was repaired and ready for me to collect. He must have got a rocket from the agent.
From then on, I have never paid extra for "quality" or a "good" brand.

1983 with 4 kids, looking at Falcon Wagon to transport the family.
$19k with bench seat in front for centre seat belt.
Nissan dealer had superseded MQ Diesel Patrol 7 seater for same $.
Bought that and owned 6 more over the years, last one a 2000 GU.
Reliable, economical family transport.
GMH said mid 70's "Not economically viable to build these here".
Look what Toyota, Nissan and the others have achieved since!
BHP said the same about putting in a steel works in Northern WA.
The Government should have asked "What needs to be changed to
allow these ventures to be viable". That's my view. Paul.

Lang never said tariffs were the answer
How ever like it or not we ran a lot better when we had tariffs

The answer sadly is within us we are all to blame, every single one of us with out exception
We regardless of our age have firmly had our hands at the wheel and steered us off into the ditch
If we arent careful we are gunna end ass up on our roof sinking in a irrigation channel
We are well and truly in that barbed wire canoe up that river and we have lost the paddle
Most people dont believe it is this serious, however I aint most people

If we dont stop pointing the finger in the blame game it may well be to late as we truly know we are the ones who have encouraged this all to happen

Paul