The surprising part is that this surprises people.
WTF else does SA have going for it?? I'm not sure, but someone must know what it is about SA that makes the state $$$.
Having determined that, what can be done to expand/maximise it?? If you're crap at making new business, whats being done to support/encourage/expand what is working???

Some damn fine wine comes outta the place............. Umm - make more???
There's got to be more than sob stories surely?

Regards

Dave, I think it's blow-back from the closure of the car industry, not just the actual Holden plant but dozens of local and interstate components suppliers fed into that and now they're mostly all gone, unable to survive without car manufacturing. Many of the former staff from Holden got quite generous separation packages because they'd been there a long time - they've probably all spent that money and are looking for work again.

Stop making excuses.

Far more auto jobs were lost in Victoria but the local machines-on-wheels sector is going gangbusters. Jayco, Volgren, Iveco, Kenworth, Bombardier....even Tomcar ATV's....and the old car assembly plant at Clayton now operates 24/5 converting Dodge Rams for the nation:
https://www.ramtrucks.com.au/latest-news/details/?post=13

Why is South Australia continually so inept by comparison?

Jayco - entirely reliant on people buying those stupid things with their superannuation and then realising they can't tow a caravan.

Volgren, Iveco, Kenworth - mostly already built by the time they roll off the boat anyway.

Dodge Ram - possibly one of the worst cars ever built, consistently gets the lowest satisfaction rating of any car.

We had a viable car industry here but it was vandalised by Tony Abbott, enough said.

Why is South Australia continually so inept by comparison?

Also, stupid unreliable over-priced 'green' energy - but don't worry, Victoria is fast catching up.

Jayco - entirely reliant on people buying those stupid things with their superannuation and then realising they can't tow a caravan.

Volgren, Iveco, Kenworth - mostly already built by the time they roll off the boat anyway.

Dodge Ram - possibly one of the worst cars ever built, consistently gets the lowest satisfaction rating of any car.

We had a viable car industry here but it was vandalised by Tony Abbott, enough said.

it doesn't matter whether the product is stupid or not - fact is, the demand is there and Victorian factories are flat out catering for it. South Australia either can't or won't.

Why is South Australia continually so inept by comparison?

Also, stupid unreliable over-priced 'green' energy - but don't worry, Victoria is fast catching up.

Mitsubishi walked away years before green energy, pal.

Mitsubishi walked away years before green energy, pal.

MMA did not walk away. MMA failed, a consequence of inept management.

Iron Ore price is starting to slide. That's going to make that surplus harder to achieve without spending cuts.

Iron Ore price is starting to slide. That's going to make that surplus harder to achieve without spending cuts.

If Hong Kong goes Tienanmen then we could face an embargo on our products in China full-stop - Trump is also making it extremely difficult for us to remain a disinterested party no matter what happens. He's determined to push through with escalating tariffs on Chinese consumer goods into the United States but has paused (rumour has it) to give US retailers an opportunity to source their stuff from elsewhere.

This is not going to go back to 'normal' any time soon, we need to prepare ourselves for the possible consequences -

Dreadful noises keeping residents of Prima Pearl Melbourne awake at night - could it be the falling value of their apartments? From The Age;

Michael and Catherine Taranto first heard their walls creak, bang and moan on a spring night in 2014. The noises made it feel as if they were in the hull of a ship and continued until morning.

It was the first of many sleepless nights for the couple who were to face five years of being tormented by the noises, which strained their marriage and eventually forced them to sell their dream home on the 12th floor of a Melbourne apartment tower...In 2015, the couple were relocated to another unit in the tower while their home was “totally gutted” – carpets ripped up, ceilings and walls removed. When they moved back in eight months later, the creaking noises continued.

Email correspondence reveals repeated complaints about the noises sent to Multiplex, developer PDG and building management over the five-year period.

Eventually the couple stopped inviting friends over.

"You certainly are far too embarrassed to have people in the apartment at that time. It happened to us one night and we ended up going out for a drink rather than staying in there," Mr Taranto said.

But the toll was perhaps greatest for Ms Taranto, who says she developed a hearing sensitivity and was forced to take sedatives to sleep at night.

Oh my gosh, poor people. I actually lived in a house in Newport VIC that had similar problems but it was just an Edwardian weatherboard that wasn't sitting on its stumps properly. I guess for a million dollars you'd expect better.

Dreadful noises keeping residents of Prima Pearl Melbourne awake at night - could it be the falling value of their apartments? From The Age;

Michael and Catherine Taranto first heard their walls creak, bang and moan on a spring night in 2014. The noises made it feel as if they were in the hull of a ship and continued until morning.

It was the first of many sleepless nights for the couple who were to face five years of being tormented by the noises, which strained their marriage and eventually forced them to sell their dream home on the 12th floor of a Melbourne apartment tower...In 2015, the couple were relocated to another unit in the tower while their home was “totally gutted” – carpets ripped up, ceilings and walls removed. When they moved back in eight months later, the creaking noises continued.

Email correspondence reveals repeated complaints about the noises sent to Multiplex, developer PDG and building management over the five-year period.

Eventually the couple stopped inviting friends over.

"You certainly are far too embarrassed to have people in the apartment at that time. It happened to us one night and we ended up going out for a drink rather than staying in there," Mr Taranto said.

But the toll was perhaps greatest for Ms Taranto, who says she developed a hearing sensitivity and was forced to take sedatives to sleep at night.

Oh my gosh, poor people. I actually lived in a house in Newport VIC that had similar problems but it was just an Edwardian weatherboard that wasn't sitting on its stumps properly. I guess for a million dollars you'd expect better.

Gotta love the self regulating private sector.

Bing, love your last comment.
A removal of red tape is a green light to do as you please.
Predicting a huge amount of serious defects in apartment buildings, very soon and continuing.

Predicting a huge amount of serious defects in apartment buildings, very soon and continuing.

As I said earlier I've lived in creaky old weatherboard houses before - they can be quite noisy, especially when it's windy. You get used to it to the point of ignoring it; at that stage VIC was very dry too so the clay-like soil in that part of Melbourne drying out and moving underneath probably didn't help.

I also wonder if the noise in Prima Pearl that those owners were complaining about is actually just the expansion joints etc and the building swaying a tiny bit in the wind as they're designed to. It's true that the engineers should have anticipated it and built in noise amelioration from that - so I guess someone didn't do their job right or a corner was cut?

Bing, love your last comment.
A removal of red tape is a green light to do as you please.
Predicting a huge amount of serious defects in apartment buildings, very soon and continuing.

Given how often Coalition Governments fight wars on red tape it's a wonder they have any left

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/industrial-relations/scott-morrison-red-tape/

There's almost quarter of a million truck drivers employed in Australia and all of them will probably be out of work pretty soon - ZeroHedge;

UPS announced on Thursday that its venture capital arm has made a minority investment in TuSimple. The announcement also revealed that since May TuSimple autonomous trucks have been hauling UPS loads on a 115-mile route between Phoenix and Tucson.

UPS confirmed to Gizmodo this is the first time UPS has announced it has been using TuSimple autonomous trucks to deliver packages in the state.

Around the same time as the UPS and TuSimple program began, the United States Postal Service and TuSimple publicized a two-week pilot program to deliver mail between Phoenix and Dallas, a 1,000 mile trip.

TuSimple claims it can cut the average cost of shipping in a tractor-trailer by 30 percent. In an announcement about the new partnership, UPS Ventures managing partner, Todd Lewis, said the venture arm “collaborates with startups to explore new technologies and tailor them to help meet our specific needs.”

It isn't entirely legal in the United States yet and the trucks still need to have a 'supervising driver', but they can see up to 1km ahead in total darkness and are apparently better at perceiving potential problems than human drivers. On established routes I guess there will probably be no impediment to allowing the autonomous trucks to run very soon. If the technology becomes approved then expect hundreds of thousands of (mostly) men to become unemployed along with the rest of them.

What future for working class people when robots have taken all their jobs?

Would it be more autonomous and employment destroying to put the trucks on a train between 2 cities 1000 miles apart and just use drivers for the last 20 km around the town?

Would it be more autonomous and employment destroying to put the trucks on a train between 2 cities 1000 miles apart and just use drivers for the last 20 km around the town?

We don't generally do that in this country - not sure about the United States but I'd imagine for anything other than very long distances it would be un-viable anyway.

Would it be more autonomous and employment destroying to put the trucks on a train between 2 cities 1000 miles apart and just use drivers for the last 20 km around the town?

We don't generally do that in this country - not sure about the United States but I'd imagine for anything other than very long distances it would be un-viable anyway.

Sadly in Victoria there is not the infrastructure to allow freight trains on the broad gauge get through in daylight.  Bendigo and Ballarat lack the paths to run the services and I am told geelong is not far behind.

There's also the issue that most of our intrastate traffic is only going a couple of hours away so if you allow an hour from truck arriving at railway container depot to train departing an a similar amount of time at the unloading point you have effectively added over 50% to double the length of time to get there.  Also more things tend to get broken during transhipment than during the transit portions of the journey.  If you include all the power/CO2 produced it ends up working out about the same as trucking it over these short distances.  The transhipment becomes viable at distances such as Mildura to Melbourne direct. Unfortunately the train doesn't go direct but does several sidesteps these days.

Would it be more autonomous and employment destroying to put the trucks on a train between 2 cities 1000 miles apart and just use drivers for the last 20 km around the town?

We don't generally do that in this country - not sure about the United States but I'd imagine for anything other than very long distances it would be un-viable anyway.

Sadly in Victoria there is not the infrastructure to allow freight trains on the broad gauge get through in daylight.  Bendigo and Ballarat lack the paths to run the services and I am told geelong is not far behind.

Nup.

The Maryvale Up train runs late A.M. to take advantage of the better RFR line.

Would it be more autonomous and employment destroying to put the trucks on a train between 2 cities 1000 miles apart and just use drivers for the last 20 km around the town?

We don't generally do that in this country - not sure about the United States but I'd imagine for anything other than very long distances it would be un-viable anyway.

Sadly in Victoria there is not the infrastructure to allow freight trains on the broad gauge get through in daylight.  Bendigo and Ballarat lack the paths to run the services and I am told geelong is not far behind.

Nup.

The Maryvale Up train runs late A.M. to take advantage of the better RFR line.

Long Island too has a day run, SSR seems to be running a few daylight grains now too

The ANU Vice-Chancellor reveals a shocking breach of security at his university involving a hack that stole all the data (including banking and passport details) of 200,000 past and present students. From the ABC:

The cyber assault was highly sophisticated, conducted by so-called "spear-phishing" malware that didn't require anything to be clicked on or opened.

China is believed to have been the culprit.

As usual there will be no public action against this outrageous incursion into one of our public institutions - again.

I'm sure there will be more buildings found to be unsafe in coming years - ABC:

Residents have been ordered to leave an apartment building in Melbourne's south-east which is covered in combustible cladding.

The Mordialloc building was deemed unsafe to occupy after an inspection by the Victorian Building Authority's (VBA) statewide cladding audit on Thursday.

Most of the decade-old complex's 17 units were already vacant, with the four remaining residents given 48 hours to move out.
The VBA's chief executive officer, Sue Eddy, said the decision was not taken lightly.

She said the building had a number of defects including combustible cladding on the external walls, insufficient essential safety measures and significant water damage that had led to extensive mould.

There are probably hundreds of apartment blocks across the nation that will need extensive remediation or possible demolition - who will end up footing the bill?

President Trump is talking very tough on China again and the result could be a global 'new world order' excluding China from US trade altogether. I'm sure the very threat will be enough to make the globalisation cheer squad faint - from News.com.au;

The US President ordered that he would increase taxes on products from China to 30 per cent from October 1.
Mr Trump’s tweet storm came as Wall Street tumbled after the US-China trade war escalated in dramatic fashion, with Trump demanding American companies seek alternatives to doing business with China after Beijing announced its own slate of retaliatory measures.

...Mr Trump said products coming from China that were slated to be hit with a 10 per cent tariff on September 1 will now face a 15 per cent tariff. He announced that goods and products currently being taxed at 25 per cent will be taxed at 30 per cent from October.

...The dramatic fallout on Wall Street came as Trump “ordered” American companies to find alternatives to doing business in China.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 700 points, or about 2.7 per cent, directly after Trump launched into a Twitter tirade lambasting China for intellectual property theft and fentanyl shipments to the US, the New York Post reports.

Pretty incredible to imagine what would happen if the world really did break into a number of separate trading blocs like it was in the past but that's apparently want Trump wants. Only a few weeks ago Trump was saying that he was going to delay tariffs to give US companies a chance to swap supply chains - now he's increasing the rhetoric again.

More about corporate America's Trump heart-attack from The New York Post;

But US execs were fuming over edict.

“The relentless back and forth between the two sides is making it impossible for businesses that have built a manufacturing base in China over the past 30+ years to plan for the future,” Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun toy company lamented in an email to The Post.

“You cannot close the border to low skilled labor and order us to bring production back to America!” Foreman vented. “Never have we ever experienced such an unhinged way of governance. It’s out of control and outrageous.”

No doubt they'll just find another low-wage country to get their stuff made in anyway - so what's the problem?

More about corporate America's Trump heart-attack from The New York Post;

We'll see what happens next.
He'll back down yet again but that doesn't matter to schmucks who lap it up. The arsonist who plays the hero for putting out the fire he started.

Mitsubishi walked away years before green energy, pal.

MMA did not walk away. MMA failed, a consequence of inept management.

There are a number of factors.

Like Ford and Holden, MMA was subject to the whims of overseas managers. As such, the factories were only permitted to build certain products that Australians stopped buying. Even the fleet buyers who traditionally supported local product diversified their acquisitions.

The gradual reduction in tariffs as a result of the Button plan in 1988 made imported cars so much more affordable that we bought more and more of them, and less of the local product.

As the local market drifted off into SUVS and utes, the local factories were not allowed to diversity production. Without an export market or local sales, their closure was essentially baked in.

Every country in the world that retains manufacturing capacity is heavily subsidised by a government. Our smaller factories, with high wage overheads, building specific products with declining appeal in the local market, were doomed.

After the MMA factory closed, studies showed that ex factory workers typically fell into one of three roughly equal in size categories. So about one third moved to other full time work, about one third moved to part time work, and one third either retired or never worked again, despite being of working age.

That means somewhere between half and two thirds of those workers had a drastic change of lifestyle forced upon them.

Yes, especially for Ford and Holden workers, many had years of notice this was going to happen. But realistically, our entire Ponzi economy focussed on digging rocks out of the ground and shipping them offshore, all while flipping houses to each other for increasingly larger amounts of pretend money.