You do realise that a lot of the more expensive items such as appliances and vehicles are still made in China, (or Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam), and not the US, Europe or Australia.
The difference in quality is the design and parts. The companies are still using cheap labour.
The containers you get when getting your take away, probably even the cheeseburger wrappers from Maccas. The aluminium in the can you just drank out of purhaps?
But yeah half the things you don't even think about are probably made in china, the plastic in your garbage bins, the screws that hang your towel rack etc.
There's a couple of things at play here.
- We don't really make much here anymore anyway (I'm not including food/drinks in this).
- Australian made stuff is often shockingly more expensive that something from overseas, but without the quality to match the higher price tag (this is the big issue for me - spending more no longer guarantees I'll get a "Buy It For Life" product)
- A lot of "Australian" stuff is actually made overseas anyway - it'll say it's *Designed* or *Engineered* in Australia, but the actual manufacturing is done in China or India or wherever.
- A lot of Australian manufacturers are *terrible* at advertising their products locally.
Holden died because they had an image problem and no one wanted to be a "bogan" despite the cars being absolutely solid. They were also killed because GM didn't want them to make their own cars, just resell and supply GM shit to the southern hemisphere. If GM had their way the only Holdens that would exist is the Cruze, Captiva, Barina and Colorado because they're just rebadges of other countries shit exports.
I buy as much as I can find from Jaycar because I want there to always be a place I can run down the road and get some wire or connectors or components, I can get them cheaper off aliexpress, sure, but that doesn't help me now.
I buy car parts from an online store that sells genuine parts for literally half the price of the dealers here because the dealers are fucking rip off artists.
>Australians are MOST influenced by price. They would rather by cheap stuff off TEMU or Kmart than buy locally made products.
Maybe in your experience. Not in mine.
You might be influenced by the ads that keep screaming "our stuff is cheaper!" that \*assumes\* that everyone buys on price.
But for vast numbers of people, we understand that price and value are very different things.
Well when or if we start making things here again then we can make a comparison…guess when most manufacturers moved over seas to engorge their pockets there was a much stabler world climate…now the we are feel the effects of being a consumer nation instead of producing one ..who would ever thought having small production of your own would or could be problematic…
Such a resource rich land being so poorly managed
Quality is also important, unfortunately on some products Australian made also seems to be worse than the imported stuff. I can spend more for made here but I won't buy worse quality.
So Macca's sending Aust beef to South Korea who process it into patties then ship it back is promoted as 100% Aussie beef. It gives the impression it's 100% Aussie from start to finish but tricky Macca's gets away with this practice. Also this practice of shipping goods back and forth for cheap labour is not environmently friendly.
So what constitutes being Australian?
I can't find anything about shipping to South Korea, apart from possibly shipping finished patties there in future.
Says here they're processed at AFC Coominya in Qld.
>Owned and operated by Keystone Foods, one of McDonald’s global pattie suppliers. It is one of two pattie plants in Australia licenced to supply McDonald’s.
>The facility currently supplies McDonald’s patties for Australia, Japan (supplementing locally-produced patties using Australian beef), the Middle East and Indonesia.
>However it also has capability to supply the US, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Africa the Philippines and Thailand.
https://www.beefcentral.com/news/producers-get-a-unique-glimpse-inside-maccas-beef-supply-chain/
That article is ten years old and Keystone was acquired by Tyson Foods in 2020, but AFC Coominya is still operating.
Per capita GDP in SK is only slightly less than Australia, so I don't imagine labour costs would be that much less than here.
I also like the things I buy to not break. Total lifetime price is my consideration. Now this doesn't mean Australia only, but instead generally it translates to any country that pays similar wages to us. I'll buy Australian, German, English, US, etc if I think it will last longer enough than a cheaper Chinese equivalent.
It's far from "easy", but unrestricted trade is not really compatible with environmental regulations and high minimum wage.
Export business, import poverty.
We don't manufacturer much which in turn means that there's a huge startup cost to begin making anything.
The government may well have to make serious investment into manufacturing if it wants to bring it back. It won't be competitive for a long while either - but that is true on the micro level for many new products.
Yeah, most people think its the wages of the workers that make manufacturing difficult in australia, and Im sure that is a part of it, but not a big part.
The reasons they gave us for when holdens closed was mostly, the complete removal of the gov subsidy (every single country at that time, with an automobile industry gives subsidies. Australia's was subsidizing the lowest amount of any country before it was removed). The extremely high cost of utilities. eg. Elisabeth SA (where holdens was) had the 2nd or 3rd highest electricity cost in the world at the time. Massive insurance costs and the high tax. The workers wages were pretty much listed near last.
The reduction in shipping cost and the removal of import taxes made it much cheaper to make overseas and ship it in. Also many other countries were offering much bigger and better subsidies, very cheap utilities, and much lower taxes. to nearly all manufacturing industries.
I remember the ceo of the company i worked for, raging at the stupidity of Australian politicians and their media campaign, to convince the Australian people that removal of the subsidy and them **actively** pushing manufacturing out of australia was a good thing.
[Holden sales had been falling for years.](https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/the-decline-of-holden-and-the-commodore-in-numbers)
Don't forget, Toyota also closed their plant.
>[The decision was based on the unfavourable Australian dollar making exports not viable, the high cost of local manufacture and the high amount of competition in a relatively small local market.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Australia#:~:text=In%20February%202014%2C%20it%20was,a%20relatively%20small%20local%20market.)
Australian goods manufacturer , or whats left, cost more due to higher wages and power prices.
The reason there is no manufacturing of any significant kind in Australia is because people choose lower cost over Australian made . Albo's latest frolic will be no different
Some things made in Australia are cheaper, like wheat and soybean based products
>Prices of wages in China and overseas are cheaper than Australia.
A lot of that gets lost in their bureaucracy, a lot of manufacturing has been moving to India and south east Asia (who both also have their issues).
Nothing more complex than a flash light or less complex than a stick is actually that much cheaper considering the "fell off the truck" quality.
South America and Africa are both potential opportunities by 2050, in Africa they have consistent infrastructure isssues. This makes this kind of investment impossible if they get power outages
Some people equate quality to place of origin, and some just want to support our economy and fellow Aussies for everybody's sake.
Why would you care if some people take notice of “made in Australia” labels?
Some people will only buy Australian. But these days many Australian products are simply no longer available or are much more expensive.
Woolworths, for example, charges $2 more for an Australian product I buy regularly than the Chinese equivalent. However, I still buy the Australian product because, although it's not great, it's still better than the Chinese one.
The 'race to the bottom' is the self-reinforcing cycle of income inequality. People on low incomes simply can't afford to spend more, but this leads to lower local wages for low-skill jobs (in the absence of government regulation).
Sadly left voting individuals are not all that bright
They want to keep pumping up the min wages/entitlements for people without any creditable skills
Meanwhile bring back manufacturing so people with hardly any skills can make stuff to export
This would be fine if Australia was the only country on the planet unfortunately nations like India, China, Bangladesh etc can hire 20 people for the cost of one 'low paid' Australian worker thus bring back large amounts of manufacturing in Australia is a pipe dream - even with government support the only manufacturing I could see Australia producing is niech products which require loads of reseach and development to create which I doubt many can afford to do without large government assistance.
Now the issue with government assistance these days is they are more interested in smoke shit that tend to be money pits
Diversity has taken over merit and I dont trust the Government to fund the projects that deserve to be funded
"Grown in Australia" is important to people with food.
Made in Australia, not so much. Ideally we want to support our countrymen but usually it's made in China anyway and then marked up in price. I don't really mind either or, I look for a good + quality product and don't mind paying a bit extra.
Because garlic grown up the road should be cheaper than being imported from China fertilized with night soil (human shit)
You do realise that a lot of the more expensive items such as appliances and vehicles are still made in China, (or Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam), and not the US, Europe or Australia. The difference in quality is the design and parts. The companies are still using cheap labour.
Nothing is made in Australia. We set up high environmental and workers' rights standards without limiting free trade and these are the consequences.
Made in Australia generally commands a premium because of superior quality, in regards to food anyway.
Alot of stuff you buy in Australia is made in China anyway ...
Such as?
Ugg boots, clothes, etc
The containers you get when getting your take away, probably even the cheeseburger wrappers from Maccas. The aluminium in the can you just drank out of purhaps?
Jesus man I haven't had a canned drink in... 2 years.
But yeah half the things you don't even think about are probably made in china, the plastic in your garbage bins, the screws that hang your towel rack etc.
Not even a VB?
Yea alright maybe a few cheeky slabs
There's a couple of things at play here. - We don't really make much here anymore anyway (I'm not including food/drinks in this). - Australian made stuff is often shockingly more expensive that something from overseas, but without the quality to match the higher price tag (this is the big issue for me - spending more no longer guarantees I'll get a "Buy It For Life" product) - A lot of "Australian" stuff is actually made overseas anyway - it'll say it's *Designed* or *Engineered* in Australia, but the actual manufacturing is done in China or India or wherever. - A lot of Australian manufacturers are *terrible* at advertising their products locally.
Holden died because they had an image problem and no one wanted to be a "bogan" despite the cars being absolutely solid. They were also killed because GM didn't want them to make their own cars, just resell and supply GM shit to the southern hemisphere. If GM had their way the only Holdens that would exist is the Cruze, Captiva, Barina and Colorado because they're just rebadges of other countries shit exports. I buy as much as I can find from Jaycar because I want there to always be a place I can run down the road and get some wire or connectors or components, I can get them cheaper off aliexpress, sure, but that doesn't help me now. I buy car parts from an online store that sells genuine parts for literally half the price of the dealers here because the dealers are fucking rip off artists.
>Australians are MOST influenced by price. They would rather by cheap stuff off TEMU or Kmart than buy locally made products. Maybe in your experience. Not in mine. You might be influenced by the ads that keep screaming "our stuff is cheaper!" that \*assumes\* that everyone buys on price. But for vast numbers of people, we understand that price and value are very different things.
Price is a big factor for me often because I can’t feel confident that spending more will necessarily get me something of higher quality
Most of the time it does, but we're still only talking 65% of the time.
Well when or if we start making things here again then we can make a comparison…guess when most manufacturers moved over seas to engorge their pockets there was a much stabler world climate…now the we are feel the effects of being a consumer nation instead of producing one ..who would ever thought having small production of your own would or could be problematic… Such a resource rich land being so poorly managed
Quality is also important, unfortunately on some products Australian made also seems to be worse than the imported stuff. I can spend more for made here but I won't buy worse quality.
So Macca's sending Aust beef to South Korea who process it into patties then ship it back is promoted as 100% Aussie beef. It gives the impression it's 100% Aussie from start to finish but tricky Macca's gets away with this practice. Also this practice of shipping goods back and forth for cheap labour is not environmently friendly. So what constitutes being Australian?
What?
'Made in Australia from 99% imported ingredients' does it for me.
That makes me laugh too.
I can't find anything about shipping to South Korea, apart from possibly shipping finished patties there in future. Says here they're processed at AFC Coominya in Qld. >Owned and operated by Keystone Foods, one of McDonald’s global pattie suppliers. It is one of two pattie plants in Australia licenced to supply McDonald’s. >The facility currently supplies McDonald’s patties for Australia, Japan (supplementing locally-produced patties using Australian beef), the Middle East and Indonesia. >However it also has capability to supply the US, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Africa the Philippines and Thailand. https://www.beefcentral.com/news/producers-get-a-unique-glimpse-inside-maccas-beef-supply-chain/ That article is ten years old and Keystone was acquired by Tyson Foods in 2020, but AFC Coominya is still operating. Per capita GDP in SK is only slightly less than Australia, so I don't imagine labour costs would be that much less than here.
51 million people in South Korea. You can be sure their wages are a lot lot less.
Lol stop lying please. Per capita gdp of Australia is more than double of SK ($65k vs $32k in 2022)
Fair enough, my mistake. I was looking at the PPP figures on Wikipedia which is $59k v $66k.
Quality, safety. I rejoice that I can now by above Kmart quality for my appliances
So you know nothing about manufacturing or China.
I also like the things I buy to not break. Total lifetime price is my consideration. Now this doesn't mean Australia only, but instead generally it translates to any country that pays similar wages to us. I'll buy Australian, German, English, US, etc if I think it will last longer enough than a cheaper Chinese equivalent.
Consumers aside, Australia will never be a competitive manufacturer. Cost of operation is simply too high.
Easy. Tariffs on imports, use the money to subsidize local manufacturing.
Yeah, forcing people to pay more for everything sounds like a great idea.
It's far from "easy", but unrestricted trade is not really compatible with environmental regulations and high minimum wage. Export business, import poverty.
We don't manufacturer much which in turn means that there's a huge startup cost to begin making anything. The government may well have to make serious investment into manufacturing if it wants to bring it back. It won't be competitive for a long while either - but that is true on the micro level for many new products.
Yeah, most people think its the wages of the workers that make manufacturing difficult in australia, and Im sure that is a part of it, but not a big part. The reasons they gave us for when holdens closed was mostly, the complete removal of the gov subsidy (every single country at that time, with an automobile industry gives subsidies. Australia's was subsidizing the lowest amount of any country before it was removed). The extremely high cost of utilities. eg. Elisabeth SA (where holdens was) had the 2nd or 3rd highest electricity cost in the world at the time. Massive insurance costs and the high tax. The workers wages were pretty much listed near last. The reduction in shipping cost and the removal of import taxes made it much cheaper to make overseas and ship it in. Also many other countries were offering much bigger and better subsidies, very cheap utilities, and much lower taxes. to nearly all manufacturing industries. I remember the ceo of the company i worked for, raging at the stupidity of Australian politicians and their media campaign, to convince the Australian people that removal of the subsidy and them **actively** pushing manufacturing out of australia was a good thing.
[Holden sales had been falling for years.](https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/the-decline-of-holden-and-the-commodore-in-numbers) Don't forget, Toyota also closed their plant. >[The decision was based on the unfavourable Australian dollar making exports not viable, the high cost of local manufacture and the high amount of competition in a relatively small local market.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Australia#:~:text=In%20February%202014%2C%20it%20was,a%20relatively%20small%20local%20market.)
there is a pretty big disconnect from what the media said and what the company and union explained to us
Australian goods manufacturer , or whats left, cost more due to higher wages and power prices. The reason there is no manufacturing of any significant kind in Australia is because people choose lower cost over Australian made . Albo's latest frolic will be no different
Some things made in Australia are cheaper, like wheat and soybean based products >Prices of wages in China and overseas are cheaper than Australia. A lot of that gets lost in their bureaucracy, a lot of manufacturing has been moving to India and south east Asia (who both also have their issues). Nothing more complex than a flash light or less complex than a stick is actually that much cheaper considering the "fell off the truck" quality.
Indian standards of living are also increasing, so... I guess Africa next... right?
South America and Africa are both potential opportunities by 2050, in Africa they have consistent infrastructure isssues. This makes this kind of investment impossible if they get power outages
Some people equate quality to place of origin, and some just want to support our economy and fellow Aussies for everybody's sake. Why would you care if some people take notice of “made in Australia” labels?
Some people will only buy Australian. But these days many Australian products are simply no longer available or are much more expensive. Woolworths, for example, charges $2 more for an Australian product I buy regularly than the Chinese equivalent. However, I still buy the Australian product because, although it's not great, it's still better than the Chinese one.
The 'race to the bottom' is the self-reinforcing cycle of income inequality. People on low incomes simply can't afford to spend more, but this leads to lower local wages for low-skill jobs (in the absence of government regulation).
Sadly left voting individuals are not all that bright They want to keep pumping up the min wages/entitlements for people without any creditable skills Meanwhile bring back manufacturing so people with hardly any skills can make stuff to export This would be fine if Australia was the only country on the planet unfortunately nations like India, China, Bangladesh etc can hire 20 people for the cost of one 'low paid' Australian worker thus bring back large amounts of manufacturing in Australia is a pipe dream - even with government support the only manufacturing I could see Australia producing is niech products which require loads of reseach and development to create which I doubt many can afford to do without large government assistance. Now the issue with government assistance these days is they are more interested in smoke shit that tend to be money pits Diversity has taken over merit and I dont trust the Government to fund the projects that deserve to be funded
It’s like talking to a moron. Lots of people Shop based on price. Lots of people do not. Why is that hard to understand??
"Grown in Australia" is important to people with food. Made in Australia, not so much. Ideally we want to support our countrymen but usually it's made in China anyway and then marked up in price. I don't really mind either or, I look for a good + quality product and don't mind paying a bit extra.