One does not have to be an MBA to realise that molten aluminium (liquid electricity) is squandered by cooling it down into ingots and exporting it from Gladstone.
Surely it is not rocket science to make the molten aluminium into the required alloys, cast it into automitive or machinery components, then cool it, machine it by robots and then export it to low labour countries for assembly.
In the case of hi-tech/ high-value items such as aircraft components, then why not do the lot here in Aus for quality assurance purposes.
Just look at the Toyota Camry Hybris and the Holden Cruze. These cars use fully imported powertrains and we simply do the assembly here, complements of the taxpayer.
In auto manufacturing here, for example, we are doing the opposite. We are increasingly importing the engines, transmissions and morphing our manufacture into assembly. Auto manufacturers are then holding out their hands for billions of dollars of Australian taxpayers' subsities to cover assembly labour. In Holden's case, that's over $73k subsity per year per worker. ( $2.2billion taxpayers funds granted to Holden over 12 years for a current 2500 workers.)
We are simply putting the cart before the horse on the advice of the multinationals who simply want us to pay for our own labour and more and pocket the profit overseas ( Toyota paid the ATO $240 million back tax in 2010 for alledgedly transferring profit outside Australia having being sprung by the ATO)
What we should be doing is casting and machining engine blocks, transmission cases and other auto bulk components and exporting them to low cost labour countries for labour intensive assembly, not the other way around.
In other words we should be exploiting our strengths rather than subsitising our weaknesses. Just think about it. The first thing that Japan or Korea has to do with our aluminum ingots is to use their value again in electricity to smelt them before moulding into Toyota or Hyundai engine blocks or transmission cases.
Auto manufacturers do not want profitable areas of their businesses located in Australia; only the loss making operations where they can get taxpayers subsities. ( see Toyota $247 mill alledged profit transfer tax:
