Bye Bye GM & Toyota Pie

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Sorry for being too precise on that occasion Portia, it is Federal, but State can also have an influence also.

I'm desperate to hear both layers of governments policies to address this.
 
FishingRick04 said:
The mentality in any workforce of only leaving a job with a payout other than normal entitlements kills me.
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That's because when Hawke and Keating started restructuring industry in the early and mid 80's a redundancy package was a payment for truly making people who worked in textile and clothing and other manufacturing industry redundant because those industries were going and there was little training either during their early working life or at the end of it. 25 or 30 years on its now become an unfortunate expectation that isn't truly deserved in the overwhelming majority of cases.

I know a mate who did consultancy for ANZ for 18 months, he charged pretty good consultancy Sydney rates. Then they brought him on as an employee and after 4 months they shut down the division they set up when they asked him to become an employee. He didn't ask for it, but he was given a 4 month payout. He just laughed when he got it.
 
Macca19 said:
Its not like theyve closed the doors today. There is 3-4 years for their employees to find alternative employment or develop a new skill that will see them employed. ......
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Agreed that at least there is some warning in which to transition but gaining a new skill is one thing, getting employed without experience is altogether another thing.

If these jobs that the people from GMH and their suppliers are there just waiting for people to get the skills why does SA have the highest unemployment rate of any mainland state?
 

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FishingRick04 said:
Ok let's change the slant of the topic a bit.

What do people believe we as a state can offer to replace the lost jobs.

Do we look at solar panels, get the new mine operating, not sure if that helps the locals area, try and become a green car specialist?

It'ss a massive plant, I'm not sure what Aust business would be interested.
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I said this in the Australian Politics forum, but I'll say it here, too:

Build a 21st century, Gen IV nuclear reactor at the site. South Australia is the perfect place for such a power plant - we have the uranium and the sodium to build a Fast Neutron Sodium Cooled reactor, plus we don't have natural disasters that would cause any problems like you had in Japan. Might even convince BHP to expand Olympic Dam as there would be a customer for the uranium right on their doorstep.

A nuclear power plant would generate enough power to not only run the state, but also pump energy into the national grid which we could sell at a nice price, as well as developing nuclear weapons capability if you wanted to go down that road - South Australia paints itself as the defense state, and if you wanted to build nuclear weapons, it's the perfect place to do so as there is a s**t load of land to traverse in order to disable any factories. Could even convince defense contractors to start testing/building prototypes here due to the added security afforded by the remoteness of Australia and South Australia in particular. Plus you have the added benefit of reduced carbon emissions.

You could also build a center for the study of Nuclear Fusion somewhere in the state - the first country to create and patent that technology will be able to write their own ticket and never have to worry about money again.

And if you're asking would I live near one, sure I would. Modern nuclear reactors have so many fail safes that it's impossible to have an accident like Chernobyl.

It's time to start value adding to the stuff we take out of the ground and start enriching uranium ourselves. It's the height of hypocrisy to say it's ok to sell uranium to India, China, Japan, France and all these other countries that have no problem with building and running nuclear power stations, but we won't.
 
Increase our docks, fishing and logistics sectors where possible. All excellent jobs for low skill workers. The nuclear reactor is an inspired option, which would be great for power prices in SA but will never happen in a million years.
 
I'm very pro nuclear power in principle, but all I've read about it seems to suggest that is isn't going to be cost effective to do it in Australia in the foreseeable future, in terms of the costs involved to do it (properly) and the actual power requirements of the country.
 
FishingRick04 said:
I'm pro loading our deserts with solar panels. Not sure if it's viable that's what I'd like to do.
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Doesn't necessarily need to be in the desert now with the latest solar panel technology, it's a pity it's not an Australian invention. It uses a bulk photovoltaic material that can harness energy from visible and infrared light, not just ultraviolet light so it's cheaper and much more efficient than current solar panels.
 
Either in early 2003 or early 2005 I was listening to Richard Glover on ABC Radio in Sydney and he was interviewing the head solar power guy at the CSIRO. He said back then that if you took the existing solar panel technology and built a solar farm 50kms x 50kms ie 2,500 sq kms with normal spacing, then you would be able to generate all the power Australia needed during daylight hours. Given Oz is about 7.3mil sq kms thats stuff all. Obviously you would spread it over the country but it gives you an idea that its technically feasible just you would have to bare the cost.

During the night you could generate power from tidal waves. Given the country has 19,500km of coastline there is no shortage of tidal movement to generate power and provide base power. The experts I have heard have talked about having to built big cement walls and putting turbines between the walls.

However when I was in Stavanger - the oil capital of Norway - a few years ago, I went to the oil and gas museum and saw that they built this contraption that helped get the gas from the North Sea to the Netherlands. The unit sat on the bottom of the ocean and the gas pipeline was connected to it. As the tide moved it turned a turbine which pushed the gas towards the Netherlands.

I figure if you throw a s**t load of R&D monies at smart engineers they could come up with a design for a similar unit that sits about a kilometre off the coast on the ocean floor and turns a turbine which generates a few kilowatts. You would need a few thousand units in any one area and you connect a whole of small cables to make one big one or several that comes back to the shore. You would have a series of these "farms" all up and down the cost where you have cities and towns. It saves having to build these dirty great big concrete generating plants. There is always a tide happening in the ocean maybe a stronger one 10-20km up the coast.

Needs some money to be thrown at the concept to see if its feasible.
 
grosh147 said:
Talking about alternative energy sources kind of makes you wish that Nikola had used a notebook :)
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I thought he did but the FBI visited his place the day after he died and took everything away. ;)

The person or corporation that builds a unit that can use the earths magnetic field to generate electricity as Tesla hypothesised will beat everyone to being the biggest and richest energy provider in the world. I have seen footage of a unit that supposedly produces 1 kilowatt. But until I see it live in the flesh I'm skeptical.

Tesla is a forgotten great should have won a nobel prize.
 

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I'd hate to be Captain Obvious but if there were money to be made in Solar Panels, we'd be full of factories already and we wouldn't need to artificially inflate electricity prices to make them even remotely a feasible investment. The same goes for green cars and the like, none of these are new inventions and it's pushing an ideal not a solution with the talk of replacing holden with what would be an even bigger money sink with no hope of a future.
 
StrappingTape said:
I'd hate to be Captain Obvious but if there were money to be made in Solar Panels, we'd be full of factories already and we wouldn't need to artificially inflate electricity prices to make them even remotely a feasible investment. The same goes for green cars and the like, none of these are new inventions and it's pushing an ideal not a solution with the talk of replacing holden with what would be an even bigger money sink with no hope of a future.
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How much money was in electronics without the space race subsidies back in 1960?

How much money was there in wiring up the computer networks of the USA of major universities and defence contractors and defence department and setting up ARPA/DARPA net without the fear by the US military that if a nuclear bomb hit washington they had no back ups.

You and I wouldn't be communicating by internet if it wasn't for huge subsidies by the US government between 1969 when the Dept of Defence officially commissioned ARPAnet to do research into network computing and 1992 when US congress allowed for video, graphics and commercial use of the network. 23 years of subsidies lead to whole new industries and massive productivity gains in existing ones.

For a history lesson you can watch Robert X Cringley's Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet to see how it started with big government subsidies in 1969. Watch from 3:30 in the following part of episode 1 where Bob Taylor explains how and where the internet started in the Dept of Defence.


To watch the whole 3 x 1hr programs or the episodes broken down into smaller parts go to this guys You Tube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/user/marklar83x/videos

 
RussellEbertHandball said:
I thought he did but the FBI visited his place the day after he died and took everything away. ;)

The person or corporation that builds a unit that can use the earths magnetic field to generate electricity as Tesla hypothesised will beat everyone to being the biggest and richest energy provider in the world. I have seen footage of a unit that supposedly produces 1 kilowatt. But until I see it live in the flesh I'm skeptical.

Tesla is a forgotten great should have won a nobel prize.
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Apparently he was loathe to write notes on his findings and experiments, preferring to keep everything in his head...or entrust it to a pigeon he met in a park. But the man was an undeniable genius
 
RussellEbertHandball said:
How much money was in electronics without the space race subsidies back in 1960?

How much money was there in wiring up the computer networks of the USA of major universities and defence contractors and defence department and setting up ARPA/DARPA net without the fear by the US military that if a nuclear bomb hit washington they had no back ups.

You and I wouldn't be communicating by internet if it wasn't for huge subsidies by the US government between 1969 when the Dept of Defence officially commissioned ARPAnet to do research into network computing and 1992 when US congress allowed for video, graphics and commercial use of the network. 23 years of subsidies lead to whole new industries and massive productivity gains in existing ones.

For a history lesson you can watch Robert X Cringley's Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internetto see how it started with big government subsidies in 1969. Watch from 3:30 in the following part of episode 1 where Bob Taylor explains how and where the internet started in the Dept of Defence.


To watch the whole 3 x 1hr programs or the episodes broken down into smaller parts go to this guys You Tube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/user/marklar83x/videos

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But that's a different argument to what StrappingTape is making. The technology is there. It can be built in bulk. But we won't ever manufacture to any economy of scale it in Australia because it's far cheaper to build in China.

We have a solar panel manufacturer in Mawson Lakes but all they do is assemble Chinese components. They are substantially more expensive than buying the whole unit made internationally. To buy Tindo supports a local industry, but that's goodwill.

As Prof Lowe wrote in the article I linked earlier in 2011 Australia installed nearly 900 MegaWatts of solar power, about the capacity of a large nuclear power station. So there is a market and if we could manufacture cheaply we would.

If we are going to talk huge government subsidies, well that's the whole problem with the car industry isn't it?
 
Ford Fairlane said:
But that's a different argument to what StrappingTape is making. The technology is there. It can be built in bulk. But we won't ever manufacture to any economy of scale it in Australia because it's far cheaper to build in China.

We have a solar panel manufacturer in Mawson Lakes but all they do is assemble Chinese components. They are substantially more expensive than buying the whole unit made internationally. To buy Tindo supports a local industry, but that's goodwill.

As Prof Lowe wrote in the article I linked earlier in 2011 Australia installed nearly 900 MegaWatts of solar power, about the capacity of a large nuclear power station. So there is a market and if we could manufacture cheaply we would.

If we are going to talk huge government subsidies, well that's the whole problem with the car industry isn't it?
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I don't know if we will but to say you shouldn't subidise anything doesn't make sense. Look at the 1960's the fear of nuclear war drove the space race and computing. Massive government subsidies back then is why we have the technological life style we have today.

I don't think we can out manufacture the chinese, I previously said we should concentrate on low volume highly advanced manufactured goods that people are prepared to pay a premium and if need be the air freight to get the goods to their country.

But given the amount of cheap coal and gas we have - renewal energy sources - will always need some subsidies. I personally would like to see what is thrown at the car industry transferred to R&D on tidal power. As I said in my previous post we have 19,500 km of coastline, there is no shortage of tidal energy 24 hours a day all across this great big brown land of ours that's girt by sea.
 
Australia is rich in resources and if the capital was there would be plenty of export opportunities.
In agriculture we should be Asia's supermarket, not food-bowl.
From mining we should be exporting products not the dirt.
In education we should be providing services to the world.
Australia still employs a large workforce in manufacturing (around 10% ref ABS table).
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RussellEbertHandball said:
I don't know if we will but to say you shouldn't subidise anything doesn't make sense. Look at the 1960's the fear of nuclear war drove the space race and computing. Massive government subsidies back then is why we have the technological life style we have today.

I don't think we can out manufacture the chinese, I previously said we should concentrate on low volume highly advanced manufactured goods that people are prepared to pay a premium and if need be the air freight to get the goods to their country.

But given the amount of cheap coal and gas we have - renewal energy sources - will always need some subsidies. I personally would like to see what is thrown at the car industry transferred to R&D on tidal power. As I said in my previous post we have 19,500 km of coastline, there is no shortage of tidal energy 24 hours a day all across this great big brown land of ours that's girt by sea.
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Who said we shouldn't subsidise anything. I said that was the problem with the car industry. The government doesn't want to subsidise the car manufacturing sector. This government all but told General Motors to get out of Australia. So you have to pick and choose what you subsidise. The government subsidises private health insurance to the extent of $5B per year and health experts are increasingly asking the question where is the benefit? Is this actually causing more harm to the public health system? So it appears government picks and chooses what it is prepared to subsidise even in the face of alternative evidence. I guess that's why we call it politics.

StrappingTape's point was manufacturing not technology development. If there was money to be made in solar panels then we would have factories producing them in bulk and we don't - we can't compete. Same with electric car technology. CSIRO might invent a fabulous battery that lasts for 1000 kms and recharges in 10 minutes. And it will be a component in a car built overseas.That's just a reality. That doesn't mean we shouldn't invent it and the government shouldn't invest or subsidise its development. But we won't be building electric cars because of it.

Again that was StrappingTape's point. We can't build the big items to economies of scale. Would 13,000 jobs in SA be dependent on the building of a battery?

Of course we want to be involved in development of advanced technology but invariably we will sell it. And that's not a bad thing, but it's a once off benefit.
 
Switzerland has a very high standard of living and has no mineral resources yet in 2012
  • total exports $332.1b
  • total imports $296.2b
It provides high quality goods and services to the world, no reason why Australia can't do the same if it has the will.
 
Ford Fairlane said:
....
We have a solar panel manufacturer in Mawson Lakes but all they do is assemble Chinese components. They are substantially more expensive than buying the whole unit made internationally. To buy Tindo supports a local industry, but that's goodwill.

......
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Did you see the story 7-30 SA and reporter Mike Sexton did on 22nd November on solar power and has a minute or two of the six minute report on Tindo Solar at Mawson Lake?

Sexton - "a successful mass production manufacturing plant in Adelaide's north that's been created without government money."

Between 6,000 and 8,000 panel have been sold ( but not delivered) so Tindo has ramped up production to 500 panels a week and looking to putting in a Saturday shift. In Oz there are sales worth $50mil per month of panels and they are the only Oz supplier. But they have a comparative advantage they are innovative. It is quality control and innovation that is the key to making productivity gains to keep you ahead of the pack.

Barry Jones always used to say its R&D + QC that is the most import part of manufacturing new technologies.

Every panel has its own AC micro inverter system ie lots of little boxes on every panel whereas the traditional DC system has an inverter box on the wall.

Tindo are spending R&D monies with Flinders Uni who now have a partnership with the other 2 unis re solar power. This is where government subsidies make sense. Don't necessarily give cash to the manufacturers but give it to the infrastructure around it. Make sure the unis engineering and science departments are well funded so that you have good profs and technical employees and fund PHD students who are doing research on the cutting edge that research might not have a pay off for 5 or 10 years.

Right at the end the CEO is confident he can win contracts in the world market. mentions Saudi's spending $109bil and India $34bil on solar panels in the coming years.

Read a bit about the issue and watch the 7-30 SA video at

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-22/solar-research-cutting-edge/5110246
 
Dobie G said:
Switzerland has a very high standard of living and has no mineral resources yet in 2012
  • total exports $332.1b
  • total imports $296.2b
It provides high quality goods and services to the world, no reason why Australia can't do the same if it has the will.
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Trouble with that is if we want to use our mineral resources, we more or less have to import them as well, as we don't bloody own them. Car batteries for example, the lead is mined here but manufacturers have to buy lead from overseas based companies. We should have spent more time in value adding our resources more instead of greedily eyeing international cheque books
 
Dobie G said:
Switzerland has a very high standard of living and has no mineral resources yet in 2012
  • total exports $332.1b
  • total imports $296.2b
It provides high quality goods and services to the world, no reason why Australia can't do the same if it has the will.
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That exactly was professor Goran Roos said and i posted on page 1 with a link to the video.

He was on Lateline The Business on 28th of October and it was a good interview about the need for a strong manufacturing industry in Australia. The 6 minute interview is at the link below. He makes a good point about Switzerland who is a more expensive country to manufacture things than Australia yet it sells manufactured goods to China not resources and has a bigger trade surplus with China than Oz does. Why?? because they make expensive but high quality stuff that China needs and wants and is prepared to pay for it. I have said to people for years we need to make high quality stuff that people want and are prepared to pay and they are prepared to pay the air freight to get it to them. Medical, scientific instrumentation and precision equipment etc. Low volume, high quality, precision manufacturing items that are expensive and requires high skilled employees to make those items.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-28/professor-yuran-roos-talks-to-the-business/5051096
 
Had quite a bit of contact with Tindo when considering solar panels. Did the factory tour and had their rep out explaining their technology. Had we gone down the solar path (in the end we didn't) we would have done the local goodwill thing.

But the thing is, even though SA has a big uptake of solar technology, I bet most of it isn't through Tindo.

Again I'm not arguing the point about investing in R&D, I support that. Personally I would subsidise Holden.
 
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