http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19487985
Clearly, we need to import Africans
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19487985
Clearly, we need to import Africans
Well she has a point, in zimbabwe $2 is a week of kindling, bedding, animal fodder and emergency toilet paper, add to that the left over food and water from the aid workers once the armies have thier fill, why, you could say they practically live like kings.
And if you are as rich as miss Rineheart you may even be able to keep your teeth afterwards.
Rarely have the phrase "When the revolution comes, she's the first against the wall" been as accurate.
Gina Rinehart... what a despicable idiot. Out for her own interests, and damned with the good of the nation. Sell all we have cheap! Squander all our wealth!
And, while we are at it let us get the police to shoot them and then charge them with murder.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
America is 10 steps ahead of youQuote:
Originally Posted by Psychonaut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMaRuk6pGOcQuote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
And yet you are several steps behind! Her father was a... uh... "visionary".
See, American racism is a subtle Art. You Australians are so uncouth.
In America you lock 1/3 of them up, defund their communities, and blame their "culture" through the mass media.
You can't just sterilize them, someone might get upset!
I am disgusted at you people, we civilized Europeans don't need a reason like race to be prejudiced over, the mere fact that someone is not as rich/powerful as us is enough.
Nationality. I prefer nationality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyblades
*cough*damn Canadians*cough*
That's overt American racism. Subtle American racism is about infantilizing them, stripping them of the dignity of responsibility for their own actions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
And turning them into a reliable voting block.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
I am not taking away anyones responsibilityQuote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
I will quit bitching when the kid from South Dallas and the kid from Highland Park get the treatment after being nicked for a bit of drugs
Are we square?
The drugs weren't mine, they were Tyrels!
You're right sir. You are free to go. Now show me this Tyrel fellow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump
Gina Rinehart is everything that is wrong with politics in this nation.
Here is what she actually said. http://ipa.org.au/publications/2082/...ment-july-2012Quote:
Originally Posted by CountArach
Quote:
While I have many investment options in a globalised economy, the place where I most want to create sustainable jobs is Australia. Yet others are increasingly feeling forced to make a different choice. West Perth, where my offices are, for instance, is filled with companies investing in low-cost, highly resourced Africa.
Now the evidence is unarguable that Australia is indeed becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export-oriented business (businesses that must sell their product in the world economy at world market, not Australian, prices). What was too readily argued as the self-interested complaints of a greedy few is now becoming the accepted truth, and, more ominously, is showing up in incontrovertible data. ANDEV members and I have been voicing our concerns and warning about this over the last two years. What hurts business can devastate our already grossly in-debt nation.
Take, for instance, the latest global competitiveness report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), in which Australia's ranking among the world's top performing economies dropped from 16th to 20th in just one year - the single biggest slide of all nations. Qatar, Belgium and Austria all overtook us.
Australia's relative fall is due to our own failures. This country simply can't afford a carbon tax or Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT).
As the WEF report noted, Australia has not made any real progress in the past 12 months in precisely the areas that advanced economies should have. We ranked 75th for government regulation, and business knows the difficulties of this. Red tape - and green - was the overwhelming concern at the COAG Business Advisory Forum in April, and we can only wish it had effectively been on the national agenda much sooner. Small businesses - the backbone of Australia - are the ones most hurt by the cost and delays of this: those mums and dads who employ one or more other people, mortgaging their homes, foregoing holidays and working long hours to stay in business and cope.
The WEF report also noted another troubling weakness - that so much of our infrastructure, especially in transport and ports, 'has been increasingly constrained in recent years' and 'tags behind the world's best'. The WEF findings are echoed in the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business' index, which similarly had Australia falling - from 11th place last year, to 15th this year.
Other business leaders have recently warned of the rising cost of business here. BHP Billiton Chairman Jac Nasser recently singled out new and increased taxes, and a 'much more difficult industrial relations environment'.
Add to that our productivity loss. As Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens put it in mid-June, 'productivity is the imperative to survive', especially as a high-wage country competing against low-wage ones. These challenges are now beyond serious dispute. To point them out is, I hope, no longer a sign of self-interest, but a duty, and a call for action.
Our federal and state governments must know that now, more than ever, we must lift our international competitiveness just to stay as well off as we are, and with state and federal debts. We must get realistic, not just promote class warfare. Indeed, if we competed at the Olympic Games as sluggishly as we compete economically, there would be an outcry. But what I'm talking about is more important.
Yes, we are told there's no need to be gloomy - not yet, at least. After all, the mining states keep the nation's growth rate relatively high, and we have a huge investment pipeline.
But we cannot ignore how dependent we now are on that pipeline. This pipeline is primarily, not only, supported by multinationals, and we should never forget that these multinationals are multinationals, with other investment opportunities offshore.
Simply, we must compete successfully for these investments to go ahead.
The Business Council of Australia's (BCA) recent report Pipeline or Pipe Dream? reminds us of the danger of counting un-hatched chickens.
The BCA, like so many now, notes that our competitiveness is falling, especially in delivering major resource projects. Labour costs are typically 35 per cent higher here than on the United States Gulf Coast, where they can also lower labor costs further if they utilise 'illegal' labour from Mexico and the south.
The same high cost problem is true when building schools, hospitals and shopping centres. We are becoming a high-cost and high-risk nation for investment. That pipeline is being squeezed and is becoming risky.
Productivity problems, labour shortages and approval costs and delays are to blame, so it is heartening that we're finally moving from arguing about such things to realising we need to fix them.
I'm pleased that the federal government has announced the first enterprise migration agreement for our major Roy Hill project in the Pilbara. Its details, however, are still to be finalised as I write.
Here is a potential agreement that will not only help business, but will help the nation. The 1715 temporary skilled overseas workers for the remote, hot Pilbara are actually just a small fraction of the 100,000 such workers entering Australia each year.
Moreover, they give us the guaranteed labour we need for a project that will give jobs to 6700 Australians during construction, and to more than 1000 afterwards. These are sustainable jobs that won't exist unless we can get sufficient labour for construction and bank loans for debt finance; however, banks need to be assured before providing money that we can get sufficient labour.
Nor are these jobs the country's only gain: more than $ 1.3 billion has already been spent on the project, of which more than 83 per cent has gone to West Australian or Australian companies. This is over the average of 72 per cent for most other big resource projects. On top of that, royalties and other taxes - in effect substantial profit share-flow to state and federal governments. Although the royalties and various other taxes apply whether profitable or not.
This is an example of the 'investment pipeline' that must keep flowing, particularly in a state and country immersed in government debts.
Business-as-usual will not do - not when West African competitors can offer our biggest customers an average capital cost for a tonne of iron ore that's $100 under the price offered by an emerging producer in the Pilbara.
Furthermore, Africans want to work and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day. Such statistics make me worry for this country's future.
Indeed, few now could have missed the reports of companies running a ruler again over investments that were in 'the pipeline' - spooked by cost overruns and poor productivity. We must listen to the reports from China that Australia has become too expensive to invest in. Now that we are belatedly seeing the challenge before us, let us not be slow to agree on how to meet it.
We need bold and imaginative plans.
We need to revitalise our mineral-rich, defence-poor, people-poor north. We need to create a large special economic zone in our north, stretching across Northern Queensland, Northern West Australia and the Northern Territory, with fewer regulations and taxes: a region that truly welcomes investment and people.
David Duke looks at a black man and sees a threat. You look at a black man and see a victim. ~;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
While Clint Eastwood looks at a chair and sees a black man.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
My grandfather looks at a black chair and sees a woodworking projectQuote:
Originally Posted by rvg
Does that mean he wants to yell at it and paint it white?Quote:
Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump
No, he wants to sand it down and paint it the same color as all off mee-maws other furniture. He only yells at meQuote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir
The: "We'll stop investing and mine in Africa if you don't lower costs and regulations!" is a strawman temper tantrum since we now have reasonable (but, still not good enough) regulations in place that will see money come back out of the mining bubble and into the Federal Gov. coffers.Quote:
Originally Posted by classical_hero
Let her cry all she wants, Australia has several benefits over Africa, such as better infrastructure and a stable advanced democracy. The claims that we need better infrastructure are only aided by the mining tax and all that entails, because increased Federal Gov. budgets will mean they have money to invest in infrastructure. Sure as hell don't see her putting her billions where her mouth is to fix some of these issues!
She wants us to let her keep business cheap for the benefit of the mining bubble. A bubble that artificially inflated Australia's numbers, so her arguments are pretty much bunked off the bat, Federal Gov. made some tough choices, but in the long run Australia will be better off, and that is what truly matters, not Gina Rinehart's bank balance.
She's failing to realize that if she stops mining in Australia, somebody else will do it instead of her. Good riddance, I say.
Indeed. This is why it is amusing when people cry about "Rich people moving away" because they can still be taxed on their income earned in America/elsewhere regardless and if they are pulling out economically, it allows other people to fill the wealth producing vacuum. If Coca-Cola decides to stop selling, more people will simply buy Pepsi, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by rvg
The complete write up definitely puts her comment in context.
Investment is about choices. Mines are typically long term investments and iron ore are some of the very longest ones.
To put it in perspective when Mount Newman was starting out ...watch the movie Red Dog to get an idea... my parents met there. I was a gold explorer and passed through there on my birthday 13 years ago. Mount will become lake before it is finished. It's a hundred year investment. My Dad was working on one of the Port Headland infrastucture projects until the econonmy cooled in the last month... Admittedly he is already being head hunted before his job contract comes to an end.
Anyhow with too much red tape, too much uncertainty on returns (super profit, carbon tax, Chinese economy) investors both foreign and local will look further afield.
Also the mines wont be shutdown completely they will turnover at minimum capacity, cease expansion projects and mothball some parts. When the political-economic situation improves they will gear up again. What the big miners fear is profit loss in the gear up phase. It also stops someone else taking their mine... Unless they want to buy it ie invest in it, but if the investment is dire why would they. So this scenario will not force BHP, Rio Tinto or Rina to walk away from their mines, it just slows down billion dollar projects that they were investing in.
I think we need more value add here in Aus. But given that the costs inputs of most items are in the couple of percent to move it around the world and labour is in the tens to forties of percent it makes sense to ship raw product to cheaper labour markets.
It's easy not to like her because she looks so disgusting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Moros
Yes because her appearance clearly is far more important than the fact that she is hell-bent on buying out dissenting voices to her policies and using the Australian media as a personal whipping-post for her unpopular and selfish policies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir
You said it.Quote:
Originally Posted by CountArach
I do find her more attractive than your PM however.Quote:
Originally Posted by CountArach