Hi Benson, The reason we we are uncompetitive in manufacturing vehicles in Australia is because we have not produced fuel efficient cars over the past 10 years.
Toyota's decision to assemble hybrids and GM's decision to assemble the Cruze was simply too little, too late.
It was an absurd exercise to subsidise Ford, Toyota and GM-Holden when these 3 manufacturers were 3 of the top importers who were providing competition to their manufacturing arms. These car 'gurus' were on a win-win deal complements of the Australian taxpayer.
If we want to be competitive in the world auto business then we should be playing to our strengths and not our weaknesses.
Our strengths are cheap iron ore, coal and aluminium so we should be casting and cad/cam machining auto components which require minimum labour.
Just look at how Japan, Korea and Germany can import iron ore, coal & aluminium and produce first class auto components even though their labour rates are equal or higher than ours.
We have to work smartly and independant of multinationals if we want to prosper; otherwise we will always be second class colonials in a third world.
