Australian Monopoly

[ramble on]

Is the Qantas maladay yet another symptom of the cost of doing business in Australia?

The game of Australian business Monopoly has the 'Utilities' firmly in the hands of profit making organisations (Macquarie Bank, Transurban, etc etc) driving the cost of doing business through the roof.

Our transportation systems - airfields, roads and transport infrastructure should not be in the hands of these organisations. They are making a total ballsup of them.

Australian airfields, airspace and the Airservices organisation should not be 'for profit' entities - they should be managed to service and foster industry.

A government that promises to wrest these things back and run them properly would happily get my vote and happily be paid my fee or toll if it was ploughed back into infrastructure and not the multi million dollar salaries of profit making CEOs.

And I would happily take a pay cut if the government could cut into the multinationals billion dollar profits to reduce the cost of living here by an equivalent rate.

Australian workforce pay has to match what it takes to live here and yet all of our natural resources and products are being shipped overseas for massive profits that the general population never see. Our workforce labour market is being shipped overseas too by recruitment of foreign labour that might be happy to come here or work for our Australian companies at a lower salary (at least initially until reality bites.)

Short term greed and profit motivation is driving us all to the wall.

[ANCPER]

A good and valid ramble.

Westfield and Wilson Parking should never have been allowed to buy all of Australia's airports, it's a crying shame.

[Hempy]

Funny thing is 30 years ago everyone was bleating about over governance and the need for massive deregulation. You reap what you sow.

[Nulli Secundus]

De regulating is not the same as privatising.

I'm actually all for government maintaining entities to compete in the market place.

Whilst I don't advocate government business enterprises holding dominant positions, it is an extremely effective strategy to contain runaway pricing and most critically, allow government to retain sufficient expertise so that when it does engage the private sector it can so with confidence and authority to maximise the taxpayers' return on investment.

Remember how government could actually build a road or a bridge. They actually maintained & owned the equipment and new their trade. Now granted they were slow, not that efficient and we all complained.


But look around today: in Sydney a section of the M2 tollway received an extra lane, took around 2 years to complete and is only approximately 10-15 kms in length. Its actually still being worked on!

Compare this to a similar civil project in Germany near Bremen, 130 km of tollway widening: took just 5 years to complete!! The M2 private sector contractor in question would take around 17.33 years to complete this.

Who are we kidding?

A second airport for Sydney......... won't be ready for 12 years! Ridiculous!!

When did you last hear a politician say instead of cutting costs they were going to demand better value for the taxpayer from contractors. In fact the contrary seems to occur whereby politicians demand the community pay more, which only encourages the private sector to ask for more more!!

No, GBE's can and should play a role in maintaining influence in the marketplace in defence of taxpayer value. Don't forget the best such example is the Reserve Bank of Australia competing against private and public institutions through trades of gold, forex and bonds.

Its number one role is to influence the market! No one complains about that.

[Oakape]

Funny thing is 30 years ago everyone was bleating about over governance and the need for massive deregulation. You reap what you sow.

Aint that the truth!

Most people tend to have a short term view in life. They are convinced by the spin doctors that things will be much cheaper & that suits them just fine.

[Oakape]

Australian workforce pay has to match what it takes to live here

Unfortunately, it doesn't have to do anything of the sort. That is a nice ideal, but far from the realities of today. If that were true, Kiwis would be earning much more than Ozzies due to their much higher cost of living, and we all know that is far from the actual situation.

The fact is, that the real cost of living in both countries is outpacing family income at an ever increasing rate. Except for the very top & some specialist areas, people are becoming poorer all the time, as price increases continue & pay remains static, increases at a much lower rate, or is even reduced, as cost cutting runs rampant in the never ending quest for more profit.

[Bahama Breeze]

O,

You said it best. The never-ending quest for more profit is a beast.
Companies continue to cut and cut and cut, including ours, that soon it will be bare bones, offering the cheapest, the cheapest meals, the cheapest amenities, the cheapest cleaners, the cheapest pilots.

It will have to get to a point where it's realised; Sorry!! There's nothing left to cut! And now we are running a pathetic shell of an organisation with everything outsourced, all for what..? Because last year's hundreds of millions wasn't enough?