Valkie wrote on Oct 19
th, 2021 at 2:56pm:
howard the coward always said
"The only way Australia can compete with third world manufacturing, is to pay third world wages"
He started the ball rolling with "work no choices"
And was gradually removing the unions.
The unions were decimated and are now toothless tigers and with importing cheap labor, they can knock down incomes even further.
howard the coward looks like his master plan is coming to fruition.
May he forever rot in the deepest depths of hell.
Up to a point, Lord Copper, up to a point.
It started with Hawke and Keating and it was a good thing, opening up the economy. 20-25 million Australians do not need to manufacture EVERYTHING from shoes, shirts, matches and tea towels to toasters and flower pots.
The problem was not beating back the unions of low or no-skill manufacturing. The problem, in my view, is the lip service paid to the 'Clever Country' wheeze by both sides and never doing anything practical and purposeful about it. Both sides were actually captured by the ratbags who run universities and the academic unions and for 15 + years it was all about 'university education' and 'internationalisation of the curriculum'. Which means hundreds of thousands of young people going to uni, learning nothing useful, having a huge debt and then working in a coffee shop.
Only about 1 or 2 % of business ever think of turning to a university for a solution to their business problems. Yet everyone was channelled into useless unis.
It is all about credentialism, not skills. An employer will hire you not because of what you leant at uni but for your sheer grit of sticking it for 3-4 years. The Boss will teach you all you need to know about the business and will not have ANY use of what you learned at uni.
The union is no use to a graduate or a skilled worker, it's something for the cleaners and the NESBs and the other assorted unskilled 'no speaka da' workers who have nothing but their collective.
TAFE was left in the hands of deeply parochial state ministers. So now we have no REAL skilled workforce in high-value fields, no teachers who can teach high value skills. And the lazy answer is to import whatever we need. High level of immigration is a repudiation of the 'clever country' idea. It's the 'let's go shopping' country model, just BUY people in.
I like nothing more than dealing with an articulate, switched on, high-skilled tradie whose horizons extend beyond footie. There aren't enough of them. Valorising useless uni degrees over useful technical and high-value practical skills was the big mistake.