I am not born in Australia - Firstly unions do in fact need to take some blame - We all understand that the Swans fans are biased after all they are the Swans fans but when it comes to Unions we want to visualise the good versus evil process. Unions are only there to fight for the highest wage that the workers can collectively achieve. Unfortunately its not an even fight and often portrayed as the poor little guys versus the rich and powerful. In fact the problem is in mining you have huge sunken capital in establishing a mine and as such to have that asset stand idle is not an option so in fact its not one sided in fact the worker has a huge advantage because his sunken capital is freely movable to another employer. I am not against Unions I just think that we need to understand that like anything excessive objectives always kill the host.
Actually the situation is simple capital is not biased it wants a return and if Peru or Africa has the same capital costs per gram or ton of output them the only variable is other costs and labour is one of them. I always laugh when I am told that we have done so well to avoid the GFC - we didnt avoid it we just had existing demand that was satisfied by our supply ability - Now because of our cost having increased via exchange rates and labour increases we are less competitive - easily solved the exchange rate will fix that but it is not linear and I wonder how keen we would be if we saw the petrol price at $2.00 a litre.
We area rich country - I dont agree we are only rich because of the small population and the amount of mineral wealth we have. However we are poor because if we applied sustainable economics we would be bankrupt - We are selling assets - minerals that we cannot replace to pay for our monthly expenses as a nation. guess what we don't and have not taken our return on capital like Norway etc and invested in in sovereign funds we have spent it on day to day expenses. It may not run-out in my or even a lifetime of a newborn but run-out it will and then the structural adjustment needed will be huge.
Actually USA is rich but it costs half as much to live there as it does here. Norway may be expensive but you dont carry the nations burden in ongoing costs. I dont begrudge the worker for taking the high wage I blame the greed and process whereby senior executives are only too happy to pay that as it justifies their over the top remuneration. We no longer have politicians IMO that seek office to do good for the nation they are seeking employment with huge perks. Community and not seeking personal reward all the time is diminishing and shareholders pay for it. If there was no franking credit system most of my investments would be in the developing world actually look at big mining companies - they are there. By the way a lot of Norway's income comes from a previous generation that created the sovereign fund so that feeds the economy with income from investments.
Its the same hypocrisy that will tell us how we have to treat refugees but at the same time is silent about china because we don't really want to upset them or we have gender equality here but we dont demand it of Arab nations.
Strangely enough I brought my assets and built my small business here and now I diversify and invest here but every year it becomes harder to see logic in not having more and more of my funds invested overseas. I bought the only truly Australian made stove a St George because I believed it was important - now I realise that its not well made overpriced and in fact IMO a bad buy - created by us not supporting them so they cannot invest in development and R&D. Essentially what we seem to want is to buy imports as they are cheap but we musn't be laid off as we want the high salary but dont support other industries.
I dont mind your pay rate as long as the project still gives me an acceptable return but to paint BHP as bad because they wont waste money on Olympic Dam is just plain wrong.
I love the debate and I am passionate about this country I chose to come to , but really I just wish we were all honest and stopped pretending - at least your post doesn't pretend you want the highest price you can get for your labour - all I ask is for there to be some transparency and no bitterness if all I want for investing my funds is the highest return I can get. Why am I a greedy capitalist and the worker a noble cause.
WPL Price at posting:
$38.19 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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