Was John Button right

[mik]

Originally Posted by BENT_8

Heres another angle, how many more people are employed by companies importing vehicles into Australia through their dealer networks.

Would it not be fair to say that lowering tariffs has enabled a greater spread of brands and dealerships and therefore more employment in the motor industry.

I remember a time when the main roads had Ford, Holden, Chrysler, Mazda and Datsun.
Today its Ford, Holden, Mitsubishi, Chrysler, Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, Mazda, Great wall, Cherry, Suzuki, VW, Skoda, Fiat...etc. etc.

That is one angle, the way i see it you have to ask yourself are you happy with all the decades of Australians building up industry and infrastructure and technology being closed down/thrown away and OZ being basically a service country? are you happy with working with minimum job security? are you happy to lose Australia's ability to be fairly independent without having to rely on other countries for goods? these are things that our home grown industry did provide for us for decades, and it is diminishing , once upon a time a low skilled person could leave school and get a job in the labor industry somewhere , be it in textiles(industry kaput), or the motor industry(nearly kaput), or a supplier, or the steel industry ........get some on the job training and happily work there possibly for decades, but these jobs are disappearing .
Even to be a lowly council worker these days(no disrespect intended) , you get asked "how many tickets you got mate", good luck getting a job without having friends or being very lucky if you are low skilled.
There will always be a need for labour type industries , a percentage of the populace are not suited to being rocket scientist or mathematicians or salesman, if you take away the majority of the local industry you are going to have a a lot of idle hands and dole cheques to pay out, and a lot more crime, not to mention losing a lot of skills.