Hey look on the bright side. You can now get a half decent coffee pretty much anywhere in Melbourne.
From the Australian:
Australia’s costly love affair with homegrown cars finally crashed into reality yesterday with the decision to kill off the 160-year-old Holden brand.
After decades of carmaking — and billions of dollars in subsidies that failed to stave off factory closure two years ago — parent company General Motors said the numbers didn’t add up for Australia’s only local car badge. Most of its operations would be wound up by June.
The company’s 800 staff and almost 200 dealers were told yesterday morning, and unions, dealers and both sides of politics reacted furiously.
Scott Morrison, who was told of the decision just before the announcement, said Australians would blame GM.
“I am disappointed but not surprised,” the Prime Minister said. “But I am angry, like I think many Australians would be. Australian taxpayers put billions into this multinational company.
“They let the brand just wither away on their watch. Now they are leaving it behind.”
Under Canberra’s assistance schemes to the car industry, Holden received at least $2.2bn in taxpayer subsidies and repeatedly threatened to quit manufacturing if money was withdrawn.
Everybody is blaming everybody else. The tone of this article implies that the Australian is backing Scott Morrison in blaming General Motors for taking our money and running. Labor and the unions are blaming the Liberal Party for not giving GM enough of our money:
Anthony Albanese said Holden was more than “just a car” and the decision “dates back to 2013 when the Liberals dared Holden to leave”. “For many Australians, Holden is part of their family story,” the Opposition Leader said…
The ACTU sheeted blame to the closure decision, in 2013 when Tony Abbott was prime minister, and accused the government of failing to protect jobs. “The Prime Minister likes to talk about creating local jobs … but he’s missing in action when it comes time to ensure that local workers have secure jobs they can count on,” said ACTU secretary Sally McManus.
She was supported by opposition industry spokesman Brendan O’Connor, who said successive Coalition governments had “goaded Australia’s car manufacturers to leave our shores”.
Does any side of politics want to talk about how the Hawke government undermined the Australian car industry by reducing tariffs, and encouraging foreign car manufacturers to sidestep tariffs by establishing assembly plants here? In essence, you remove the competitive advantage of the local car manufacturers, then bribe them to keep operating in your country. Seems legit. Socialism and crony capitalism are two sides of the same globalist coin. Better not draw attention to that.
The unions and environmentalists are also to blame for killing the car industry in Australia as both have kept the cost of manufacturing too high. The unions have held the car industry hostage for decades by placing artificial pressure on labour costs. Environmentalists hold our major political parties to hostage, preventing the construction of new dams, coal-fired power stations and the introduction of nuclear power to Australia. We are one of the most resource rich countries in the world, it should be easy to manufacture here, but the radical left has sabotaged any hope of that.
How will we make money now? Farming and mining are noble pursuits, but even if the far left can’t stop the latter, they have ensured that we will keep selling uranium to our future conquerers. That leaves a construction industry artificially boosted by mass immigration. Victoria has the lowest birth rate in the country yet it is the fastest growing state. We’re not making new people, we’re importing them. We’re not making economic growth. We are importing economic units and calling it growth. The cattle keep coming here because they think Australia is still a first world country where they will have better economic opportunities.
For now.
But hey at least we’re not racist anymore. We live in a country where women can do whatever they want, gay people can get married, children can change their sex, the media gives equal attention to women’s footy and cricket as it does to real sport, and we have all this delicious food now that the rest of the world lives here. And we are about to finally ban the cross of our people.
A little Asian kid blowing a petal in Sydney is Australia’s driving future.
What happens when you reimagine how a whole
city moves? Click to find out.— Toyota Motor Corp. (@ToyotaMotorCorp) February 14, 2020
Bugger it. We had a paradise, but we gave it all away.
