I’ve heard stories of some towns close to mining areas where essential jobs likes postmen can’t be filled as no-one will work for that level of pay when they could earn $150k, an hour up the road for driving a lorry around a site. Complete madness.
yes- communities have gone to shit-FIFO has ruined them-even if people didnt want to work in the mines the ordinary jobs wouldnt pay enough to be able to rent in these towns
They were offering doctors one million a year ti go to certain towns and couldn’t fill the role. Now that is not actually to do with mining, but it’s still another issue for small communities who’s old people have to travel miles fr medical help. And miles in Oz is hundreds, not ten or twenty.
Sounds like A Country Practice.
The theme music for A Country Practice was absolutely brilliant. I think John Palmer was in it too.
Or the flying doctors
Would Oz have subprime lenders?
:rolleyes:
our banks are the safest in the world
:rolleyes: aus aint any different
:rolleyes: http://www.gfmag.com/tools/best-banks/11661-worlds-50-safest-banks-april-2012.html#axzz1rBGK6FUj
Anglo Irish Bank was voted the best bank in the World in January 2007
sure it was
Australian banks are extremely safe as they are highly regulated and also not completely and utterly fucking thick.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/home-prices-extend-national-retreat-20120601-1zlm6.html#ixzz1wYhYmLQB
Even in the salubrious eastern suburbs on Sydney, the rental yields are only in the 3%-6% bracket. People arent spending (Cock and Bull and Tea Gardens aside), Billabong with a huge profit warning yesterday. Harvey Norman and the rest. The liberal government in NSW are going to have to start shedding numbers in the public service. Qantas cutting costs. When corporates are in trouble, banks are in trouble.
Only my view but I reckon there is going to be a serious crash in Australia or more likely VIC and NSW as the overvalued currency puts more pressure on manufacturing, retail, tourism and the other non mining related activities. Property prices have been steadily falling anyway. Most people I know and work with are leveraged up to the hilt with property related debt. The bricks and mortar is a safe investment mantra is as bad here as it ever was back in Ireland.
Unfortunately I forsee Alison O’Riordan type negative equity nightmares in the near future.
I agree with what you’re saying here about the economy to a point, I don’t think there will be a sudden crash though. There are still tens of billions in mining investment projects happening, but its slowing down which is a good thing, as the aussie dollar will lose some of its value, especially as mineral prices continue to fall. But the banks have huge reservoirs of cash available to them, when you consider the multi billion dollar profits they’ve made in the last ten years and they are very conservative institutions, just look at how they react to interest rate cuts. They don’t. Which is a good thing, the underlying basis of the economy is sound. There are high levels of personal debt when you consider the amount owing on mortgages, but if you look at retail spending over the last 4 years, its been dire and people are actually reducing things like credit card debt.
I actually thought property prices would have fallen significantly more to date than they have, but its a fairly resilliant market and the demand is still there. But I agree that negative equity will start to become a problem soon. Crash? No.
Soft landing eh?
Aus has its own currency so can devalue pretty quickly if it came to it, which is a positive. Reducing retail spending and credit card debt is minor really if people are well in over their heads on property related debts, many many multiples of their annual income generally. If negativty equity is a problem then the banks have a problem.
Not everyone can work in a mine, Ferguson was right anyway last week. The resources boom is over. The price of iron ore is heading back to 2009 levels. At one stage in 2011, it was at $190 or so a tonne, now its down to $100 and likely to keep falling. Iron ore was at $13 a tonne in 2002 so the growth has been phenomenal. Demand for iron ore comes from China primarily as India has their own stuff. The assumption is India will take up the slack with their demand for coal but Aus are making sounds about branching out into a knowledge based economy that Ireland was in the not too distant past. I’m not sure about the foundations of an economy where you get paid more for driving a truck at a site at a mine rather than being a doctor.
There is absolutely no way Australia would devalue, this isn’t Argentina.
Thats the thing with a boom though, the money being paid to people for cleaning the jacks at a mine is outrageous, but it is coming to an end, the madness at least. There decades of ore and minerals still in the ground and natural gas is overtaking the land based mining. The investment pipeline is still there, the whole Olympic Dam thing is more about BHP’s incompetance than anything. Mining will continue to contribute to Australia’s GDP, but not to tax take to the extent it should have and that is the big missed opportunity. The thing to remeber about the mining boom, is that it actually employs fuck all people, less than 3% of the workforce are in mining.The country needs to find ways of converting the manufacturing capacity and workforce to value add products and services, thats the challenge now, along with developing the country’s infrastructure, which is woefully neglected. In fairness to this government, they have actually reformed a shit load of stuff, which is astonishing considering the political enveironment they’re in (NBN for example). It can be done, look what Hawke and Keating did to open this country from a De Valera esque economy.
I would say that a far bigger threat to the aussie economy is posed by a future Liberal government, with absolutely no policies or vision whatseover other than the implementation of Workchoices the sequel. I despise that Abbott cunt and his fat fuck of a finance spokesman, Joe fuckwit Hockey.
I hardly know anyone here in WA over the age of 35 without a 2nd or 3rd property. Any small builder we deal with seems to have 5 or 6 on the go. It’s nuts, alot of these guys only work 3 days a week. They are so cocky about the whole thing it just mirrors Ireland a few years ago it’s scary. If a builder who only tips along making enough to get by ad pull in some rent has all these properties then someone is allowing dodgy lending To go on somewhere. All the ads for consolidating debts etc on tv sound incredibly like home.
Also everyone here seems to have shares. now of course nothing wring with that, but to listen ti them talk about it again would make you wonder, who is giving the advice. Whereas alot of Irish people tend to listen ti someone gobshite like Eddie Hobbs or some know it all down the pub, Aussies tend to think what’s said in the newspapers is gospel.
The scope for avoiding a big bust is bigger here of course than it was for us at home. If even a few other economies improve in anyway (China, India etc ) this will undoubtably help Australia. But god help them if it does go wrong, at least here in WA.
mate the uk devalued during the GFC - quantitative easing in other words or printing more money put simply.
from my limited enough knowledge of aus politics, the labour crowd are a bit like FF. Involved with the unions and crazily corrupt. Craig Thomson using HSU funds to pay for hookers etc. Liberals more right wing, cut public service numbers and funding. Balance budgets etc. Can already see it in NSW with Barry O’Farrell, going to be serious cuts in public service workers and after my first hand experience over the past 2.5 years, cuts in their largest department are well overdue to instigate reform and keep the likes of me in contractor coin.
Tony Abbott really is a creep. Only 1 in 8 of the aussie workforce works in manufacturing though. Some company or other went bust the other day down in Melbourne, politicans solution was to try and get them jobs in a mine 5 hours flight away. Thats not a proper economy.
A lot of people’s shares here Kev are part of their super which by law we (tax payers that is) all have to have a minimum of 9% of our gross income paid into. Which in theory is a very good idea but most people have their funds aligned to bank shares and real estate anyway. A lot I work with have the attitude, that they cant cash it in until retirement so put in on high risk stuff. Mine is pretty much in cash and low risk investments but of course since the AUD is artifically high at the mo, I could do with diversifying it a bit.
why are you so boring?