The election thread - Two middle-late aged white men trying to be blokey and convincing..., same old shit, FFS.

[Binaural]

Bottom line, Australian company boards need equal representation from execs, employees, and customers. I understand that it the way the Germans do it somewhere. Sounds awesome.

To be fair, the bulk of Australians are employed by small and medium companies, something like 70%, which probably don't have a board, or a board that are basically advisers for the executive team. Boards of public companies are very powerful because they select the CEO, but most Australians don't work for those. The reality of the boards I've seen in action (high tech manufacturing) is that they are concerned about their people, and they are really concerned about quality, but they cannot forget about keeping costs under control and responding to competitors. To some extent, outsourcing some manufacturing or services is basic economic reality. Australia has 0.3% of the world's population and the laws of comparative advantage suggest that it is relatively difficult to be good at everything, and expertise and clusters matter in manufacturing.

The reason the German Mittelstand is often cited as being successful is that they have a lot of SMEs who are reliable, technology leaders in a specific area, and export oriented. They aren't usually competing for consumer market products on price alone, and as a result they have thrived. Having worked for one of these companies when I lived there, one underrated aspect of their structure is that they are often family-owned, and they are hence long-term in their perspective. This results in investment in, say, developing apprentices, and maintaining strong home ties to particular towns or small cities. Germany only has 3 cities with more than a million people, and it is amazing how often you will see a town of 10,000 people with significant employers. My wife's home town has two large employers who supply global markets for special machines, for example. That kind of commitment tends to stay strong through good times and bad.

 

[Flow-Rider]

The reason the German Mittelstand is often cited as being successful is that they have a lot of SMEs who are reliable, technology leaders in a specific area, and export oriented. They aren't usually competing for consumer market products on price alone, and as a result they have thrived. Having worked for one of these companies when I lived there, one underrated aspect of their structure is that they are often family-owned, and they are hence long-term in their perspective. This results in investment in, say, developing apprentices, and maintaining strong home ties to particular towns or small cities. Germany only has 3 cities with more than a million people, and it is amazing how often you will see a town of 10,000 people with significant employers. My wife's home town has two large employers who supply global markets for special machines, for example. That kind of commitment tends to stay strong through good times and bad.

They have family run businesses that are over 100 years like "Miele" and they invest in their workers, where Australia seems to think they need to import skilled workers. Their university degrees are half theory and half practical in the field, so engineers can virtually go straight into the workforce with practical experience. The Governments have tried some vocational training here but it doesn't seem to work as well, not many businesses that I've ever worked for want to invest in workers.

 

[Nambra]

Not sure Howard is to be blamed in isolation @Haakon - successive Labor and Coalition governments have done their best to screw this country too. The current lack of any real bipartisanship on long term policy combined with the toxic negative, adversarial culture between and within parties has seen Australia decline in relative terms on so many fronts.

IMO, the rise of social media has also contributed massively to the erosion of good government too. The Howard government was probably the last to have enjoyed an existence largely without the daily scrutiny/outrage/falsehoods of social media - our representatives spent less time fending off the flak and just got on with the job. I suppose you could argue that greater scrutiny means more accountability, but the transient nature of modern media and the desire for salacious content means we get Barnaby's affair or Scomo's photo-shopped shoes front and centre instead of constructive debate and long term policy outcomes on climate change, energy, health, education, immigration, water, infrastructure or communications. And in the meantime it gets so broken we need expensive royal commissions to out all the horrors and finally trigger long overdue change.

 

[Haakon]

Not sure Howard is to be blamed in isolation @Haakon - successive Labor and Coalition governments have done their best to screw this country too. The current lack of any real bipartisanship on long term policy combined with the toxic negative, adversarial culture between and within parties has seen Australia decline in relative terms on so many fronts.

IMO, the rise of social media has also contributed massively to the erosion of good government too. The Howard government was probably the last to have enjoyed an existence largely without the daily scrutiny/outrage/falsehoods of social media - our representatives spent less time fending off the flak and just got on with the job. I suppose you could argue that greater scrutiny means more accountability, but the transient nature of modern media and the desire for salacious content means we get Barnaby's affair or Scomo's photo-shopped shoes front and centre instead of constructive debate and long term policy outcomes on climate change, energy, health, education, immigration, water, infrastructure or communications. And in the meantime it gets so broken we need expensive royal commissions to out all the horrors and finally trigger long overdue change.

No arguments there... Australia is the lucky country in that we're lucky to be in as good a shape as we are given the "visionaries" we've been lumped with.

 

[Nambra]

Too right. You wonder if we're not just going through a phase of addition to banal horseshit and everyone will wake up to themselves sometime thinking "how the hell did I waste so much time on nothing important?" It all started with Seinfeld I reckon...

 

[Binaural]

They have family run businesses that are over 100 years like "Miele" and they invest in their workers, where Australia seems to think they need to import skilled workers.

Importing skilled workers is something we actually do pretty well. I've worked in a few fields where the engineers came largely from overseas because there wasn't a local pool of people with real skills in the field, and that's a big positive for a small, isolated population such as ours. That's not to say we can't be smarter about it, because even a cursory glance at the skills list for, say, a 457 visa includes a lot of jobs that don't even require basic trade skills (Flower growers? Uphosterers?).

Their university degrees are half theory and half practical in the field, so engineers can virtually go straight into the workforce with practical experience. The Governments have tried some vocational training here but it doesn't seem to work as well, not many businesses that I've ever worked for want to invest in workers.

There's certainly something to that. I did my undergrad at UTS, which includes a 1yr work experience program, as opposed to the usual 4year degree with 3 months jammed in somewhere. Feedback I had from the couple jobs I interviewed at was that this style of education was in line with the local norms, rather than a simple bachelors, which wasn't well regarded by recruiters.

 

[Binaural]

No arguments there... Australia is the lucky country in that we're lucky to be in as good a shape as we are given the "visionaries" we've been lumped with.

It's always worth quoting the full text from Donald Horne - 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.'. A bit harsh I think, but even if the people can be mediocre, the political processes we inherited have stood us in good stead.

 

[sane]

Not sure Howard is to be blamed in isolation @Haakon - successive Labor and Coalition governments have done their best to screw this country too. The current lack of any real bipartisanship on long term policy combined with the toxic negative, adversarial culture between and within parties has seen Australia decline in relative terms on so many fronts.

IMO, the rise of social media has also contributed massively to the erosion of good government too. The Howard government was probably the last to have enjoyed an existence largely without the daily scrutiny/outrage/falsehoods of social media - our representatives spent less time fending off the flak and just got on with the job. I suppose you could argue that greater scrutiny means more accountability, but the transient nature of modern media and the desire for salacious content means we get Barnaby's affair or Scomo's photo-shopped shoes front and centre instead of constructive debate and long term policy outcomes on climate change, energy, health, education, immigration, water, infrastructure or communications. And in the meantime it gets so broken we need expensive royal commissions to out all the horrors and finally trigger long overdue change.

Long term policy...now that would be something

 

[hifiandmtb]

Norway rocks.

All built on the back of fossil fuel interests.

Yay Norway.

 

[Haakon]

All built on the back of fossil fuel interests.

Yay Norway.

Indeed. We generated waaaaay more fossil fuels than they ever did - remind me again what we have to show for it...?

 

[Comic Book Guy]

All built on the back of fossil fuel interests.

I'll just put this here: https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/economy/governments-revenues/

 

[hifiandmtb]

And no sign of divesting their economy of such FFI.

Shame on them. Shame.

 

[Haakon]

And no sign of divesting their economy of such FFI.

Shame on them. Shame.

Cough Adani cough Abbot let’s build taxpayer funded power stations cough.

Yeah, shame on Norway....

 

[Haakon]

They export it all. No different to us exporting LNG and coal and claiming the emissions are not our problem.

Domestically Norway is run on hydro electricity.

Only difference here is that the fossil fuel companies take all the cash, and in Norway it’s kept for the country.

 

[hifiandmtb]

Straya doesn't greenwash.

And they can afford to divest. And should, while apologising & showing the rest of the world how to decouple.

Norway fanbois are deluded.

 

[Haakon]

Straya doesn't greenwash.

And they can afford to divest. And should, while apologising & showing the rest of the world how to decouple.

Norway fanbois are deluded.

Yes it does... And Norway doesn’t. Depending on your view. Mind you, it’s increasingly on the nose within Norway, so much so that they changed the name of Statoil (State Oil) to Equinor to distance the government from it... (same company that wants to do deep sea drillli g in the great Australia Bight btw...).

But like Saudi Arabia and some other developed oil rich nations, they’re madly spending the dosh on infrastructure and economic measures to take them beyond the oil income.

Norway also invests heavily globally and uses their sovereign wealth fund for political clout too, it’s an interesting topic worth reading up on.

We are just dumb though. Chevron and others all offshore the profits and the ATO just shrugs it’s shoulders. And our politicians think the answer is to kick people off the dole...

 

[pink poodle]

Well I thought the Gonski review was going to be a moment of long term bipartisan policy making for our great nation...how wrong I was.

 

[John U]

We are just dumb though. Chevron and others all offshore the profits and the ATO just shrugs it’s shoulders. And our politicians think the answer is to kick people off the dole...

To a fair extent we are. A lot of us are too lazy to sort the truth from the bullshit and believe what ever the MSM tells us. This is a major part of why we get stupid decisions from government.

 

[Calvin27]

To a fair extent we are. A lot of us are too lazy to sort the truth from the bullshit and believe what ever the MSM tells us. This is a major part of why we get stupid decisions from government.

I disagree. I rekon most of us are just too busy and occupied to do anything - hence most riots happen when people are out of work go figure. It's why we are continually sold on things like jobs, because joe average has a family to feed an a mortgage to service. I think people are more aware than we give credit for, unfortunately knowing what to do and the effort to repond is the challenge. I mean given the frequency and volume of piss poor leadership, most of us would barely have time to wipe our own ass if we were to pursue issues. If we were French however....

 

[scblack]

You heard zereo complaints from a population that was getting tax cuts? Well, isn't that a shock?! Not like the electorate to vote on their back pocket and to be short-term thinkers....

I'd be reluctant to pin the 1st prize on Howard only for Australia being able to weather the GFC? I'd argue that there were many reasons Australia made it through: China carried out a massive economic stimulus program, much of it that went into construction that powered Australian exports, mining development and also resulted in a lot of capital flight that went into Australian real estate. US quantative easing made Australia a safe haven and saw mountains of foreign capital flow into Australian investments. The earlier structuring/regulation of banking in Australia and the management of financial risk meant that the contagion didn't hit Australia like it did much of the world (Howard era policy if I recall correctly) and a number of other variables (excludig pink bats.....).

It is widely lamented that Australia wasted a lot of what we gained from the start of the Asia boom on middle class welfare, in order to win elections - both parties eing guilty of this. The missed opportuunities are often cited as future funds (modelled from the Norweigan experience), national infrastructure, integrating new technologies into the national school curriculum, reducing foreign aid in the immediate region, etc.

There's a lot written about this stuff and a lot of it from non-partisan economists.

Yes all you say is good analysis. But I was responding to a person saying Howard squandered mining windfalls. He is the ONLY PM ever to take debt back to Negative, and with Costello created the Future Fund. You cited the Future funds as a missed opportunity - they did create one. Facts, dude.

You heard zereo complaints from a population that was getting tax cuts? Well, isn't that a shock?! Not like the electorate to vote on their back pocket and to be short-term thinkers....

Calvin27 and many others on here received those tax cuts with open arms as part of that electorate. Now, in hindsight they are very, very Wise and see those cuts as squandered opportunity.

20/20 Hindsight is wonderful isn't it?

US quantative easing made Australia a safe haven and saw mountains of foreign capital flow into Australian investments.

Sorry not right.

The factor at play here is interest rate differentials. US easing meant we had higher interest rates so cash flowed in to park it in bonds. What happens is players borrow money in US at 0.5% and park it in Australia at 2.5%, so effectively getting a free 2.0% on their cash.

Australia is not seen as a safe haven, nothing changed there.

Cash flowed into bonds - not investment. You may have a terminology difference with me there. Bonds are just debt, it is not investing in anything in Australia - even though it is an investment classification. Semantics at play there.