On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:18:48 GMT, Joerg
wrote:
Ross Herbert wrote:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:23:11 -0800, Joerg
wrote:
Does anyone know a nice tropical island where
living is safe, not too expensive, somewhat English-speaking and
served by Fedex?
Australia has all those benefits and it is an island albeit an
'island
continent'.
Yeah, but what I heard from engineers there the authorities are
behaving rather destructive to small business. Exorbitant import
tariffs and so on. A socialistic trend ain't my cuppa tea. Small
business is the foundation of innovation and a region's well-being
and I expect politicians to understand that ;-)
So I should add to the list: Good biz climate, conservative gvt.
I somehow think that your description of the conservative
Liberal/National Party federal government as "socialistic" would not
go down too well with John Howard, who is totally in bed with your
republican George W Bush. I think you have not been keeping up with
the news because the trend in Australian federal governments over the
past 15 years or so is definitely NOT towards solialistic ideals -
rather the opposite even for the Labour side of politics.
The traditionally so-called "socialist" side of politics here is the
domain of the Australian Labour Party which has been on the opposition
benches federally for over 10 years now. In contrast to the Liberal
(ie. conservative) federal government, all 6 states have Labour
governments and they seem to govern in a manner not unlike the
"conservative" side of politics. These days, there is little to
separate the policies of both the so-called "conservative" and
"socialist" side of politics in this country.
Small business the world over is always crying out for a better deal
from governments of all persuasions and it will criticise no matter
how good things are. The fact is that in AUstralia non-farm sector
private companies having fewer than 100 employees accounts for around
47% (as at 1995) of Australia's total workforce.
http://www.pc.gov.au/ic/research/inf...s/smallbus.pdf
This seems to indicate that small business isn't travelling too badly
here and this figure is higher even than USA in the same period
according to the above link. I doubt that the situation has worsened
in the last 12 years considering John Howard's Work Choices
legislation introduced only last year. This gives the employer the
ultimate right to hire on his own terms and to fire without giving any
reasons. There is almost no protection for the individual worker now
and union negotiated employment conditions have al but disappeared. A
poll taken this week shows that 67% of workers are against the new
Work Choices legislation.
Now if you want to talk about protectionism, then it is hard to go
past the USA in terms of cross-subsidies to the American farm sector
which prevents Australia gaining access to the US markets for its
efficiently produced farm products. And then there is the matter of
the USA not allowing privately owned luxury vessels which are not
built in the USA to home port over there so our manufacturers can't
gain access to US customers. In order for an Australian owned and
based ship builder to bid for a USN contract (Littoral Combat Ship)
they have been forced to set up a manufacturing facility over there.
http://www.austal.com/
I doubt the same condition would apply in reverse. We can't be doing
things too badly here if our small nation can compete with US
manufacturers and beat them at their own game.
In terms of import tariffs Australia has virtually led the rest of the
world in reducing these in recent years and is continually battling
against Europe, USA and Japan to match them. For example motor vehicle
imports currently have a tariff of 10% soon to be reduced to 7%, and
in a country of only 22M people trying to support a viable vehicle
manufacturing industry (Ford, GMH and Mitsubishi) is pretty tough
without some protection against cheap imports from Asia and elsewhere.
You can do your bit to help Australia by buying an Australian designed
and built Pontiac G8 - 30,000 of them will be in your showrooms in the
coming year.
http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/Ar...ID=29015&vf=22
http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web...3!OpenDocument