Remember when they had vision
It seems Prime Minister Anthony Albanese does. In Brisbane this week he announced that the ALP Government would be considering legislation that would bring some high technology manufacturing back to Australia. While some of us may be pining for the return of the ‘Aussie designed and made’ Holden or Ford, along with the Lightburn fridge, AWA Television and so on, that’s unlikely to be what he was talking about. It’s also fairly difficult to claim that Holden and Ford were wholly Australian anyway; as the ultimate decisions were made in Detroit and Dearborn respectively.
What Albanese is more likely to be talking about is the recent announcements regarding measures to support solar panel manufacturing as well as the machinery needed to make green hydrogen. No doubt there is more to come. Australia used to make solar panels and we had world leading technology. But we stopped partly because the government of the day decided not to provide some support when cheaper and initially less well made panels began to flood the market. While Abbott & Hockey withdrew support from Australia’s motor vehicle industry both sides have form in this area thanks to neo-liberal economic policy.
Albanese isn’t the only leader of a country that is promoting a process to bring manufacturing home. The USA’s Inflation Reduction Act is one example, with other ‘well developed’ economies either planning or implementing similar packages. And it makes sense. While not everything will work and bring us global domination in a particular area, the economics stack up. A local workforce employed in the design and manufacture of material and items required around the world pays taxes and funds the services and retailers in the area they live in (who then go on to pay more taxes, wages and so on). It also makes us far less susceptible to supply shocks should something happen somewhere in the world that disrupts trade and commerce such as another pandemic or some tinpot dictator determining that he should take over another country.
The media has noticed the change inside the government as well, an example being Michelle Grattan’s piece in The Conversation when’re she discusses Albanese’s Industry Policy as well as the governments change in attitude to the war in Palestine.
There is a good chance that no-one expected Opposition Leader Dutton to come out in full throated support for the governments apparently changes in policy on manufacturing and the worsening situation in the middle east, it’s telling what he did do. When Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated that Australia, like some other nations around the world, are considering options regarding recognising the Palestinian state, Dutton (ably assisted by his usual mouthpieces employed by ‘Sky after dark’, The Australian and Nine Media) was horrified. Rather than couch his opposition in terms of someone who aspires to the political leader of our country, he seems to think of something abhorrent to say and then goes to the next level. There is no correlation between a Palestinian protest in Sydney and a terrorist event in Tasmania, despite Dutton’s claim he was demonstrating how a conservative political leader might have acted. There has also been little if any comment on Albanese’s statement regarding supporting manufacturing in Australia.
It takes time to be constantly negative. Every idea and suggestion that is made has to be examined to look for the hidden agenda, half truth or trap that might be able to be blown out of all proportion to placate the ever diminishing ‘rusted on’ Coalition supporter as well as those further to the right. Half truths can also come back to discredit you. Recently Dutton flew to Western Australia to attend a birthday soirée hosted by Gina Reinhart. Dutton claimed he paid his own way and the records submitted to the Parliament support this. What Dutton didn’t mention is that the cost of travel for the staff that accompanied him was billed to the taxpayer and totalled around $6,000. Apparently Dutton was at Reinhart’s birthday party for under an hour and was back on the hustings in Dunkley talking about the cost of living the next morning! It’s doubtful Dutton’s staff would have felt an overwhelming need to be in Western Australia for an hour or so if Dutton wasn’t going there.
Albanese’s vision of the future may not be as rosy as the rhetoric suggests, and we have little detail on what the vision really is. No doubt there will be challenges and blind alleys on the way to a more vibrant and successful country. Dutton in contrast seems to believe that negativity and constant niggling will convince enough people to vote him into power at the next election.
While we might still have two older white men in change at the next election, one hopefully will be able to sell policies with positivity and vision while the other still apparently seeks a return to the days and practices of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government. If so, it might be a really interesting contest of ideas – at last!
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11 comments
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RomeoCharlie -
Max Gross -
Roswell -
Louis de Villiers -
Kerry Baker -
Cool Pete -
wam -
Ross -
leefe -
ajogrady -
Roswell
Return to home pageA contest of ideas requires that ideas be put forward and as Dutton has frequently, stridently and offensively demonstrated, he has few ideas only more and more outrageous thought bubbles which show him to be a throwback to the fifties. His one actual idea, nuclear power instead of renewables is a case in point, a thought bubble whose fundamentals don’t stack up and which always ignores the ‘nasties’ of radiation and safe waste disposal over a half-life of centuries. Talk about consigning the problem to our children’s children and haven’t we already bequeathed them enough with dud housing policies, climate destruction and failed military adventurism?
However it’s alright for Albanese to try to look like he has a policy but it would be nice to see some progress on issues facing Australia today – the economy and housing affordability, a decent welfare support system, an education system that doesn’t encourage teachers to leave and so on. Oh, and give AUKUS the flick, it’s a foolish program that, as everybody (except Dutton and Albo) says puts us deeper in thrall to the outrageously militaristic and war-mongering US.
Use one word to describe the current Labor government after two years. I’ll start. DISAPPOINTING.
Max, you stole my word.
The announcement of the $1billion to support manufacturing of PV panels in Australia is typically political. But how much real content does it contain?
Max is correct: “disappointing” is the word which first comes to mind regarding the government we elected in 2022 which seems more often to try to merely polish the bad ideas (“policies” sound rather optimistic) of the Coal-ition.
Why does Albanese so eagerly embrace AUKUS? We all know it’s an utter croc, apart from ushering in nuclear, which Australia has always rejected, through the back door. Without any discussion. Even the attempt at the Labor Party conference to discuss it got shut down. Meanwhile, we have to put up with the nonsense of the Safeguard Mechanism, continued approvals, and subsidisation (sic!) of Fossil Fuels, Coal-ition type responses re refugees, the awful failure to the Gaza genocide, continued attempts to erode environmental legislation rather than strengthening it, continued failure on integrity like continuing persecution of David McBride and Richard Boyle while the real criminal activities are left untouched, and the list could go on and on. Clearly the duopoly continues to fail us. Time to dramatically shake up the system: Greens and Community Independents.
A while back during one of Dutton’s slumps in the polls, rumours suggested that Andrew Hastie wants the top job in the Liberal Party. A former military officer 41 years old might attract the support of younger voters. There aren’t really many in the Liberal Party who spring to mind as being real contenders, but I’d think by now they are nearly at the ‘anybody but Dutton’ stage. And Albanese’s performance has been fairly abysmal, he’s a liability to Labor now. Will Australia elect more Greens and Indies? I suspect after the Referendum debacle, the outrage over AUKUS and Gaza, we are living in ‘interesting times’. The big threat to Australia now is the far right.
The point that Louis de Villiers made is legitimate as with modern packaging you can see on a packet of frozen vegetables, “Packed in Australia from X% local product.” If we go to the car industry, a 1997-2003 Toyota Camry V6 was made in Australia, but the engine was imported from Japan (the 4-cylinder engine was made here) and if you bought a station wagon, the side glass in the rear (between the back doors and the tailgate) was imported from Japan, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and Ford had some electrical components on the Falcon range and Fairlane sourced from Japan. One thing that people have not answered is this. TCF manufacturers claimed that they could not compete with cheaper imports, BUT, if you had bought a Chesty Bonds t-shirt 25 years ago that was made in Australia, you paid just as much for a Bonds t-shirt that was designed in Australia and assembled in China.
No company, whether it is locally-owned or a foreign-owned subsidiary should be permitted to simply assemble its products here from imported components with workers told, “Okay, that part is made in China, that part is made in Korea, that part is made in Japan, that part is made in Belgium, and it’s your job to assemble the finished product.” A company should be told, “You can assemble in Australia, but you must have, say, 70% local content.”
Let’s face another reality. Tone the Botty was not a supporter of renewable energy hence he didn’t care if people wanted to use imported solar panels, however, he farted a crock of hooey about the Pink Batts Scheme.
Max asked us to describe the Albanese Government in one word and I find that impossible to do. The Albanese Government has done some good, but I am disappointed with its policies on asylum seekers.
The greatest danger that this country faces and the greatest threat to individual liberties comes from the Far-Right. Tone the Botty may have farted that the Liberal Party needs more women MPs, but he is still an Orbanist dickhead!
The CSIRO was the only memorable aspect of pig-iron bob’s 16 years. It remains our best hope for future development of economic manufacturing programs. Albanese is far in advance of anyone since gillard and deserves support and another term. As for dutton he needs not people to vote for him because he has 40%+ already. His job is to get people to vote against Albo. If dutton, supported by murdoch, the ABC, the bandit and people like Karklis, has moderate success in his negative attacks, Albo will lose 5 or more seats.
Max, “Disappointing” is probably what most people think of our federal Labor government, if they follow the mainstream media.
It’s obvious to anybody who cares enough to look, the media do not like Labor governments.
Anthony Albanese may not be our greatest PM but he has not plumbed the depths of being called “Tones”. Well not yet anyway.
It’s the esteemed blogger Grumpy Geezer who best describes Spud and the coalition as
“roadside dumpers, shrunken intellects, onanists, P76ers, pelvic thrusters, doggers, Trumpers, pimps, Nut Bush lip synchers and shout absconders, he’s the best the unelectable Tories have to offer”.
That this lot is above Labor in the polls is the mainstream media’s greatest achievement.
Max, Roswell:
The best that can be said is that they’re better than the Coalition, which is a bar so low that speleologists still haven’t found a cave deep enough to see it.
Disappointing!
Albanese’s unwavering support for obsolete overpriced AUKUS subs, murderous genocidal Zionists and corrupt to the core Ukrainian Nazis, on other words a shiver looking for a backbone or the USA’s lapdog on everything USA, “all the way with the USA”, will see Albanese lose his seat at the next election.
The ayes have it.
Disappointing wins.