Interesting they "get" what made Australian sedans so good. Interesting that they actually knew we existed!
Sad really.

Thanks Tony Abbot and Joe Hockey, well done!

Unfortunately Holden, Ford and Toyota have been struggling for a lot longer than blaming the likes of Abbot and Hockey. Our love of a good wage and a house has made production costs out of reach for keeping companies viable in Australia. It's a shame they couldn't pack up and ship the tooling, design and assembly over to another country to keep the dunnydoor going.

I can't be bothered with who did what. Other than Button more or less doubled the price of a new car overnight. Then it was all down hill from there.
However, if you can't build and sell for a profit without a government handout then you shouldn't be in business. GM can't do it so they took manufacturing off shore. I don't see why my taxes should be used to subsidise a bloke to buy a car from Holden anymore than that blokes taxes should prop up my farm so he can eat.

Funny how political grandstanding blurs reality.
Like the propaganda released by the union movement, claiming Abbott & Hockey to have scored a "trifecta" with Ford, Holden & Toyota pulling out.

But the simple fact is Ford had already pulled the plug during the Rudd/Gillard term, well before Abbott got in - some 3-4 months in fact.
But don't let facts ruin the political blame rant.....

Wages is a problem yes, but not the whole problem. Lack of export opportunities - or disguised plans to fail (eg the Territory to Asia), or lack of support from corporate HQ (think G8 & Chev SS opportunities that weren't maximised, or the export opportunity FPV missed out on with the Miami when Ford US contracted Roush instead).

But getting back to wages, think back to the 80s. A typical factory worker was living in a 3 bedroom house in the outlying suburbs, from week to week, driving a 10 year old 2nd hand car, and the annual holiday was a trip to the coast or the Qld theme parks. Fast-forward 20 years and these "highly skilled" factory workers are mortgaging McMansions to the hilt, financing new cars, and flying to Bali every 12 months. Their salary exceeding that of an average school teacher, that just 20 years prior, would have earnt 50% more than a factory worker.

That's just one cost that has gone well above the growth rate of everything else. Add in the raft of taxes & charges (carbon tax, environmental levies, OH&S costs etc) and it starts to become very costly to do business here.

I challenge those who think the unions & wages are not to blame, to go check out the wage rates in Kentucky, where Toyota build the Camry to quality levels equal to, or exceeding Australia. Here's one link to help, but there's a number of government sites with the data as well: https://www.payscale.com...te=Kentucky/Hourly_Rate
Now compare that to what Toyota workers in Australia were being paid - one source noted $28/hour minimum - and you can see why Toyota will quite happily pull out of Australia, and build the export LHD cars in Kentucky (or any of their other handful of Camry plants).

Subsidies to make it more attractive to Australians to actually farm rather than sell their farms into foreign ownership or to large Companies might work. In Australia we probably are positioned well (at least compared to other land masses) to provide food not only for ourselves but to the world, yet short-sightedness by politicians has made it harder and harder. Sure water is an issue, but it is similar anywhere else. I agree that food production is going to be a massive issue, and so is water. Many predict wars will be fought in the future over food and water, or at least over the real estate on which to produce food and get access to water. You can see the problems now faced with energy and gas as Government has allowed large private or corporate ownership to dictate where future energy will come from and how much gas is to be exported rather than kept for future domestic use. The idiot left tells us renewables will solve all, and we don't need coal or gas. The truth of the matter is renewables only are useful when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and even if you can somehow store it economically you still have to have a network to get it to where it is consumed, and that network needs to have rotating generation to generate the base load energy that the renewables supplement. This can only be done right now with coal or gas (or nuclear). The Turnbull Government rightly is interested in Snowyhydro expanding the Snowy scheme to be ready for more storage of renewables as hydro is the best form of a "battery" available to store future renewable energy. I think only Tumut 3 is capable of this right now, and the idea is to bore tunnels and put in infrastructure to convert the rest to hydro storage so water can be pumped back to the top reservoirs during times where there is excess energy available on the grid, and running the hydro generation when renewables are not working. Nice read here if interested:
http://www.snowyhydro.co...g-pumped-hydro-storage/
If we are all going to electric cars in the future, or even semi-electric we will have to supplement all that energy no longer produced by ULP or diesel with energy off the electricity grid, and it will have to be generated somewhere/somehow. My hope is there will be a breakthrough in nuclear power that the end product is carbon or lead rather than Plutonium. I can live with the danger of the process but not with the waste output.

Oh the spin Byron, the spin.
I spent 30+ years working in the energy storage industry, and this one has been around for at least that long.
Ignoring the environmental impacts of hydro, the tussle between irrigators (why the hell do we grow cotton and rice on the driest continent on earth...?), the hydro generating requirements and environmental river flows, the technology is incredibly inefficient.
It owes it's existence to the ability to sell peaking energy to the grid for very short periods of peak demand at a massive profit to the generating company. All funded by government grants, and distorted by the NEM. Profit is the entire motive here, not an altruistic energy alternative.

Oh the spin Byron, the spin.
I spent 30+ years working in the energy storage industry, and this one has been around for at least that long.
Ignoring the environmental impacts of hydro, the tussle between irrigators (why the hell do we grow cotton and rice on the driest continent on earth...?), the hydro generating requirements and environmental river flows, the technology is incredibly inefficient.
It owes it's existence to the ability to sell peaking energy to the grid for very short periods of peak demand at a massive profit to the generating company. All funded by government grants, and distorted by the NEM. Profit is the entire motive here, not an altruistic energy alternative.

I question any group that considers environmental flows from a dam on a river as normal. That water naturally would have been gone out of the system as it entered the river catchment. Australian rivers traditionally went dry, not existed continuously with a flow. To truly be environmentally conscious we would remove all dams and regulation of flow.
We grow cotton and rice in Australia because we can. Grapes and vegetables are also prolific users of water. They also are grown in the driest continent on earth. I don't irrigate by the way. I also don't agree that some cotton growers seem to be able to rort the system at will.
Am I wrong in assuming we are nowhere near building or even designing a storage system for power? Is the inefficiency with hydro surrounding the pumping to re-use the water?

Hey Wb, have you seen what they are doing in the Netherlands with agriculture? They've made great advances in using the little space they have (and at time unfavourable climate) by growing heaps in climate controlled greenhouses (big greenhouses 50acres for eg) that have year round growing and multiple layers (think warehouse racking). I can't remember the exact figures but they are capable of producing something like 20x the produce per acre of traditional farms.

From memory the Netherlands exports 25% of all Europe's Produce. Amazing for a country with such a small footprint.

I can't see batteries being the storage answer. There must be a massive environmental disaster involving the worn out batteries. Not to mention the amount of rare earth minerals that need to be mined to make them.
Perhaps they could pump sea water to run turbines for the excess power generation? It's in bulk supply and free. Pump it the top of Mt Tomah for example and let it flow back to the sea. There must be a way to do it simply.