By Cagerattler
We’ve been watching the ads on television of late dealing with Australian-made articles and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve only given them scant thought. Just this past week though I put it into more perspective. As an avid model rail enthusiast I enjoy being on a forum site. One of the topics deals with wait times on supply from an iconic American manufacturer, or so I thought. Due to re-location and re-tooling offshore, this company will not be providing orders to dealers/customers for a few months. This supply issue made me consider the big picture, particularly in an Australian context. If the USA, home of free enterprise, is sending so much stuff offshore, then God help us.
In the next decade our once quite well-supported car industry will be gone, never to return. Ford Australia have already announced that the local car building industry will be finishing in 2016, and you can bet your boots that GMH won’t be too far behind. This then flows on to components companies in the main, unless they can find markets elsewhere. Electrical/white goods manufacturers have either been bought out by overseas big players or ceased trading altogether, as have clothing and food companies unable to compete with ridiculously cheap imports. Don’t let’s even start on the out-sourcing of call centres, newspaper sub-editing etc…
Why can’t our stupid politicians see this? Stop putting political correctness first and start making decisions such as giving the Free Trade Agreement the flick or at least putting some substantial reforms in place within it. GEE…it’s done our manufacturing industry the world of good so far. Just wait while I get my tongue out of my cheek as I say that… So often, it seems, we are buying items made cheaply by low paid workers employed in bad conditions. We ignore the corruption – out of sight out of mind, just so we can save a few dollars on these goods. Don’t be fooled, some of these “iconic” companies are using sweatshop labour to boost profits.
I think most of us would be happy to pay the few extra dollars if we knew that it was genuinely supporting local manufacturing, and ethical enough to spend a little more if the sweatshop workers were better paid. I’m no genius (far from it) but at least lesser disparity between overseas to locally manufactured goods would present a choice of quality rather than just cost, and up the overall picture in a competitive sense.
Come on Rudd and Abbott, do something really useful and make some changes to help our manufacturing industry in a real way before it’s all too late.
What do you think? Rod McGiveron.
