[LINK] PM "knowledge and ICT skills more important than minerals"

[tomk]

On 8/10/2012 8:56 a.m., Glen Turner wrote:
> On 06/10/2012, at 10:04 PM, tomk <tomk at unwired.com.au> wrote:
>
>> I think it is more likely that we need plumbers, machine fitters,
>> turners, boilermakers, mechanics, farmers (and not the mechanised type),
>> factory workers.
> I don't know where you live, but here in Adelaide -- the industrial heartland of Australia -- you've pretty much described the older unemployed.  There simply is no work for fitters, turners, boiler makers and factory workers. Because of attitudes like your's about what is "real factory work" we missed the bus on electronics assembly, and now there are just too many positive externalities for firms assembling in China for firms assembling elsewhere to compete.

There's an old saying... when in doubt... follow the money.

No Glen, the reason there is no work in Adelaide is because the 
"consultants" in the nineties earnt fat fees by teaching other countries 
how we made things. Further, we opened up our schools and taught 
foreigners how the best minds in Australia think....
And we sold that intellectual property, essentially our future for a few 
pieces of silver.

Approximately 22% of South Australian Industry was steel and car parts 
related.  BHP moved to Oregon [cheaper coal] and the spare parts 
consultants went to China to transfer the business to lower cost labour 
regimes.

But - while it was going on, everyone paid their shareholders an 
increasing dividend.
I call this Term based economics [electoral term and company director term].

> There isn't even work in farming. Even the highly profitable farms -- such as organics and vineyeards -- are still highly mechanised. At the most they need seasonal labour, and I'm not going to knock that as picking fruit has helped pay for my house, but it's not a year-round living.

Actually, the fastest growing industry in Australia today is not ICT, it 
is Organic Community based farm plots. Little farmlets where people who 
can't afford Woolworths petrol to drive to "the fresh food marketplace"  
can grow their produce so that they can afford to survive after paying 
for all the experts to fix and repair the ICT encrusted devices that are 
no longer consumer serviceable, programmable and in some cases operable.

The VCR era should have warned us that technology was going to be a 
problem. It is my firm belief that over fifty percent of the population 
are still unable to record a program off Free to air using a timer 
(i.e.: without an automatic EPG).

>> What Julia should be doing is giving Australian companies that develop
>> in Australia with 100% Australian trained staff a 30% preference on all
>> government contracts and a 20% tax break.
>>
>> Now that would both get ICT going again and open up Australia to all
>> kind of foreign investment.
> Oh dear, you just don't understand how modern trade works. If you get a tax break then competitors in the market you are selling into will lobby for your pricing to be inflated by that amount. Australia's beef with such treaties isn't that this happens, but that it isn't applied to agriculture as well. In short, a tax break or subsidy is a way to constrain Australian firms to Australia.
Actually, that's exactly what I am suggesting. That would be good. 
Australian firms for Australia.  I think the outcome of that policy can 
only be positive for persons looking for jobs (in Australia).

The alternative is a return to the tariff wars of the fifties and 
sixties to protect Australian jobs.

>
> It's hard to talk ICT in Australia without talking about our most significant ICT firm -- Telstra -- and noting its complete failure to penetrate a market outside of Australia+NZ. Telstra is already strongly subsidised (eg, was given rent-free an existing last-mile network) and it's hard to see how further subsidy would have lead to it being more successful overseas. If fact you could argue that its high Australian prices have made Telstra unable to compete overseas (and I don't mean from a labour productivity point of view, but that such a strategy would have lower returns than their operations in Australia and thus be unacceptable to stockholders).
Stockholders. you mean the <1% of Australians that depend on their 
dividends from Telstra to survive ?
The Labour Government is committed to social equality, enhanced medical 
benefits. With such a forward thinking Government let us not worry about 
the 1% that need their (made up and unrealistic) dividends that are paid 
merely to justify ripping off the other 99% of the population with 
commerce stopping communication pricing.

Lets forget the overseas markets business... let's hunker down and 
concentrate on survival.

> You can compare that with Altassian -- who needed to sell overseas from the beginning and doesn't really have a "home market". But their entire operation depends upon good ICT infrastructure at good prices being available in Australia.

There are 16 million Australians that haver no idea what you are talking 
about or what relevance the survival of a small company like Altassian 
has with the cost of petrol at the pump next week.
But they are starting to understand how they can get a lettuce for less 
than five dollars.

The next election will not be won on ICT or overseas ownership of 
Australian farmlands.
It will be won on the back of a one dollar lettuce grown in your 
backyard by commune based kids from the housing commission flats up at 
the end of the street that enter a partnership with you to use your land 
in return for a percentage of the produce they grow.

In closing... let's follow the money. What are the new industrialised 
billionaires buying ?
I don't think it's ICT companies.....

TomK