Australia Will Suffer Without Auto Manufacturing- Alan Mulallay

[Bill M]

Originally Posted by b0son

At the end of the day, no amount of policy will correct for uncompetitive pricing where manufacturing is concerned. The trend in the western world is for increasing regulation and bureaucracy, and that only increases the cost burden.

For me specifically, we're now getting audited for compliance by the government at unacceptable intervals. Its approaching the break-even point where the cost of compliance is approaching the profit that part of our business generates. Its going to make more sense to say goodbye to 20% of our revenue that this area makes up, and let go of 20% of our workers that we'll no longer need.



But even manufacturing adopts automation wherever possible, and automation advances always aim to reduce the man hours to turn out a product.

Why would I pay someone $50k to work on a line when I can pay $50k for a machine that replaces them and pays for itself in the same amount of time? The machine isn't going to whinge that his (harder-working) co-worker gets paid more, he isn't going to make dubious workers comp claims, I'm not going to have to implement largely pointless safety measures for the machine, etc.

You have missed the point.
line workers are a small part of manufacturing.
There are the many and varied roles that precede the assembly process of sophisticated products.
The Automotive industry is not a simplistic segment and has a broad spread of intellectual property though out many other industries.

Whinging workers? You are whining about compliance, get used to it.
The world is headed down that path already, heard of RoHS compliance?
It is getting stricter and affects the most basic manufactured items and the Chinese are coming to the party because they want to do business with affluent western nations.

Instead of looking through the keyhole open the door, the view is better!