kevin rudds attack on john howard, page-65

Hi Briter. I mentioned manufacturing industries and I had in mind the metal industries. Toolmakers, turners and fitters and machinists are the sorts of trades people I had in mind. A visit to a general store will soon tell you that we have little hope of competing in a field which was once largely supplied by Aussie manufacturers.

That is not only, or even essentially a matter of lower overseas wages but also of automation and scale of volume.

If you are familiar with metal manufacturing, I'm a professional engineer (Melb Uni), and am involved as a director in a few manufacturing companies. Many trades jobs have shifted up to automation technologies and hence programmed machinery so that is about the only way some Aussie manufacturers remain viable. That sort of machinery requires less workers as well as tradesmen to "read plans". Programmers read the plans in the new manufacturing era.

I spend a bit of time in the States and one measure in the auto industry is the number of man hours per vehicle produced. That figure has plummeted in the last decade or so and is still, in the name of efficiency, declining.