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Bringing back Australian Manufacturing: Discard programmed obsolescence

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What's really sad, is all the article does, is discuss how both parties are to blame and debates the politics.

Rather than questioning why it is happening, that's the issue, rather than focusing on he said, you said tribal journalism.

That IMO should have been one paragraph in the article, not the whole article, but that's journalism these days.

Nothing constructive, just another political opinion piece IMO.
 
Hey frugal, you want more stock related discussion, well sometimes the bigger picture issues have more relevance than individual stock chatter.
Here is something from the general chat section, that all stock followers should have a think about, especially when it comes to 'Made in Australia' dream.

From a recent news article.

The new chief executive of Tomago Aluminium, the country’s biggest electricity user, says the smelter’s goal of switching to a predominantly clean power later this decade is not achievable, derailing its emissions reduction targets for 2030 and putting the plant’s future at risk.

Jerome Dozol, who took over as chief executive in July, said the energy price on offer was too high for the Tomago smelter near Newcastle to keep running without government assistance. He called for “urgent action” to secure continued operations at the plant, whose existing electricity supply contract with AGL Energy is due to finish in 2028.
 
frugal.rock said:
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As I said in the 'future of energy generation and storage thread' quite a long time ago, this rapid transition to renewables, will lead to all energy intensive industries in Australia to review whether their continuing processing here is in their best interest.
PS a lot of the new industries that were going to flurish through this transition aren't doing so well either, RFX, CXL, NMT for example.
So picking winners isn't for the faint hearted. Lol
I will stick with boring, rather than trading ATM. Lol
Made in Australia, is looking less and less likely umfortunately.
 
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So we have The Trumpet sprucing "Making America Great Again" and then here at home "Just sell the farm' instead.
 
Manufacturing is fundamentally a product of hard sciences and skills and as with anything, the first requirement of success is to have the relevant skillset calling the shots.

Put an engineer in charge and you end up with engineering outcomes.

Put an entrepreneur in charge and you end up with entrepreneurial outcomes.

Put an administrator in charge and you end up administrative outcomes.

Put a lawyer in charge and you end up with legal outcomes.

Put a politician in charge and you end up with political outcomes.

Etc.

Noting that if the aim is manufacturing then it's engineering and entrepreneurial outcomes that are needed not just within manufacturing companies but within government, utilities, education and society in general. That being so, that's who needs to be calling the shots.

I've nothing against administrative people personally, but it's a reality that no administrative person is going to set up a technically complex manufacturing operation from scratch when it's far simpler to just drop ship the product from China instead. It's only technical people that'll go down the track of making it themselves. Just as art tends to be terrible when it's made by a committee or manger, it really needs artists calling the shots if it's to be any good.

For those mentioning batteries, well we used to make small batteries in Australia at this site. AA's, C, D, 9V etc all made there, closed in the 1990's from memory. https://www.google.com/maps/place/3...try=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTExOS4yIKXMDSoASAFQAw==

Add that to car batteries made at various sites and Australia's made batteries in the past yes.
 
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One thing we have to realise is that virtually every other country in the world except poor stupid little Oz subsidises their manufacturers(and farmers) to some extent. (China, US and Europe especially)

Our problem is that we have been living in dream world thinking that 'free trade' is or can be a reality when it's just a sham and other countries are sniggering behind our backs and pumping resources into their own industries.

Unless we get a grip on reality and start or continue our own subsidy programs, then we are doomed on the international trade front.

Which is why holding up the Made in Australia legislation is stupid policy. (Damn politics again).
 
But being suspected of "Making Australia great again" is the greatest insult for half of voters ...
On the 2 areas i know, cattle and mining, governments (state,/fed) are endlessly trying their best to sink your business...
At the very least, leave us alone..
 
Absolutely nailed it.
Of course we can't jump in the deep end and compete with high end high volume products, but with something like grid batteries, we at least have an edge in the material supply chain.
It obviously would be difficult, but too many politicians are looking at the exit door, rather than trying to tackle the too hard basket.
Everything politicians do IMO, is half arsed and geared to the election cycle.
That's why voters will flip them like pancakes, none of the voters believe the politicians have their heart in it, when one does the voters will back them.
 
sptrawler said:
As we say in the energy thread, reality catching up with ideology.
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didn't they say they would use 'biomass ' ( wood-chip/wood-pulp ) that should certainly lower carbon EMISSIONS , LOL

nah Germany is done as a civilization , it will either collapse into anarchy , or just another failed state , ready for the next mustache-man to ascend to power
 
Hmmm level playing field, with one side of the board sloping up and the other down.
 
I don’t know, we seem to be doing pretty well out of it.

I mean, we have managed to keep the highly profitable industries here, while exporting low profit or loss making industries.

Take the steel industry for example, we are the largest supplier of Iron Ore to the global steel industry, and we make shiploads of profits, taxes and wages on the back of it.

However the steel industry even in China is losing money half the time, would we really want to take Labour and capital away from Iron Ore production and deploy it into steel making? I don’t think so.

There are very real limits to the amount of labour and capital we have available locally, we need to deploy them efficiently, into the parts of industries where they are most productive.
 
You are looking at things from a purely capitalistic viewpoint.

There are other considerations like national security, supply line security and self reliance which actually have a value in an increasingly uncertain world.
 
SirRumpole said:
You are looking at things from a purely capitalistic viewpoint.

There are other considerations like national security, supply line security and self reliance which actually have a value in an increasingly uncertain world.
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China has already proven it can strangle Australia by not delivering.
Happened before and no doubt will happen again when someone upsets the powers to be over there.
 
Value Collector said:
I don’t know, we seem to be doing pretty well out of it.
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Trouble is sustainability.

First because deglobalisation is slowly but surely gaining momentum and has been for some time now. In my view that's the biggest macro trend of the lot when it comes to investing, at this point we're a very long way away from the 1990's mindset of free trade and the cracks continue to widen.

Second because without entering any discussion on the politics coal is our second largest export and there's a definite move away from it. From Australian Government statistics:

Coking coal export peaked in 2015-16 at 187.9978 million tonnes. In 2022-23 export was 156.287 million tonnes, down 16.9% from the peak.

Thermal coal export peaked in 2019-20 at 212.6898 million tonnes. In 2022-23 export was 182.1305 million tonnes, down 14.4% from the peak

So the shift's already happening there. It's not a hypothetical maybe someday, it's underway right now and with a rising population the per capital export of coal is falling quite rapidly.

Similar with gas, Exports have flatlined since 2019-20 so that's a per capita decline.

Iron ore I'm not sure, I don't follow that as closely.

From there it's a relatively straightforward argument about the value of the currency going forward and the development of some sort of alternative industry for which manufacturing, in particular the refining and smelting of ores, stands out as an obvious one given Australia's past strengths in that area.

Note I intend that as an economic and investment comment not a political one. There's no point arguing what should or shouldn't be when it comes to coal, I'm just looking at what's actually happening.
 
The world isn’t going to abandon global trade.

And, if we lose an industry like coal, then that capital and labour that is freed up should be diverted to the next best place, still no reason to try and force it to inefficient endeavours.

If it makes sense for us to smelt ores we will, but if we aren’t going to make money doing it we shouldn’t do it.
 
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