Quote:
Originally Posted by astroron
Could you tell me what Australia manufactures in any great volume to make any difference 
We have a very small manufacturing sector, and have had for a very long time, and it is only getting smaller IMHO.... |
Ron, since you asked me a direct question, I will try to present my own private view of the subject we are discussing here.
For the last 22 years I was watching a sad decline in manufacturing (I am talking about electronics industry, because I was working in that sector) and pulling all activities of all big players in communications industry manufacturing out of Oz - Philips, Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, NEC.... they are all gone now from this country, both as manufactures and R&D centres... because elsewhere it was cheaper to do business.
At some point in time Australia was very cheap environment for NEC Japan (because of strong Yen, and thanks to this fact, I had my job as R&D designer for quite a time.. but Japan as a whole went into trouble, and then China become attractive for them due to cheap labour, so my job was gone 4 years ago.
My last job was a position of RF design engineer at PBN Global - originally Australian manufacturer of CCTV infrastructure for signal distribution (fibre, RF amps for cable and so on), before they completely moved all their operations to Beijing, China (well, now they can have 5 local engineers for the same money as me only), actually I was even involved in training program for locals (students and graduates) over there.. not that this was really needed, since Chinese engineers were and are quite capable as a matter of fact.. as is everyone else.... so I could say that I was digging my own grave by doing this over there (and I
do not feel bad at all about this - it was the only reasonable course of action for the company management to do in a given circumstances.. if I were the owner, I would have done exactly the same thing)
Here in Oz now they have only a brand (because "Australian company" still looks and sounds better than "Chinese" on global market.. but not for long, IMO).
All this is partly caused by high AU $ (or weak RMB).
Since I lived in Beijing for quite some time over the last year, I have a rough feeling about buying power of locals, compared to buying power of us here ... it is actually not that much different (meaning - for the average Chinese engineer's salary they can buy roughly the same amount of bread and butter as we can buy here, for average AU salary. Some things are cheaper, some are more expensive, but as overall cost of life is concerned, the real difference is not that huge.
It becomes apparently huge when/if we start to convert $ and RMB's back and forth - then some may be fooled into thinking that we are much richer.. not so IMO.
Yes, you are right, manufacturing is getting smaller and smaller - I think we lost momentum a long time ago, and the critical mass of local expertise, suppliers and other factors required for self-sustainable manufacturing sector simply dissipated over time... I am really not sure what our kids will do in the future (apart from services and hospitality... clever country, eh?)
I was in north eastern Thailand and I could easily live there. The only thing that made me come home is that I didn't liked be fussed over. As much as that sounds great, I like to do things myself. I think I am as little too independent to fit in there. And besides, I rarely saw stars there, it was always overcast.
My last purchase as at 1.04 
