Ethel .... all Prime Ministerial Holdens were 'bomb proof'.

Jeez, were some people running on a four drink minimum last night? :E

Holden make a shit car. I had to drive the damned things while OHMS and they all played up like second hand lawnmowers :ugh:. Re the Hiluxes, the 'Holden' Colorado ute is nothing more than a rebadged Isuzu which isn't made here anyway, so what's the diff? :bored:

Many years ago BMW approached Qld Police with a bid for their patrol car contract. Their cars were better, faster and cheaper (without luxury car tax) than their Australian built equivalents. The only reason the coppers didn't go for it was the issue of public perception, so they bought inferior cars to support the local industry. Those cars were Fords, and in the long run it obviously didn't help the Ford production line one little bit. :( I suspect Holden will be the same. These are big American companies and they don't give a toss about our workers or our economy. Once the bottom line says 'leave Australia' that's what they'll do. Manufacturing inferior cars in small quantities at the southernmost end of the global supply chain just isn't working, particularly when they're so lousy that even the locals won't buy them.

I think we'd be better off investigating what sort of manufacturing we could do here well and encouraging companies to invest in that, even if it meant some (da da da....) tax breaks, which both sides of politics hate more than they hate Clive Palmer.

Hmmm... amazing how people treat cars that arn't their own. An old hoons joke from many years ago: Who makes the best rally car - Avis. ...and knowing how poorly rental cars get treated it is amazing i've never had a problem over many years of Holden/Ford rentle.

I've owned many Holdens over the years (couple of Fords) and found them to be as good as any. And i work them hard.








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All the arguments being posited here could be equally said to apply to submarines. Yet it's the safest bet in town that even after the evidence staring us all in the face with the Collins class debacle, we'll build a(nother) shitty, substandard homebuilt submarine that will cost four and possibly ten times as much as a vastly superior off the shelf model (and nuclear powered to boot) we could buy from overseas.

And the foreign submarines might actually work!!!

With GM Holden's confirmation that they are indeed pulling the pin and closing down their Adelaide plant in 2017, the pressure on the Coalition government to provide jobs building substandard, overly expensive submarines in Adelaide will be almost impossible to resist. If Tony Abbott has the intestinal fortitude to say no to the FOREIGN OWNED company building those submarines in Adelaide, he hasn't displayed it yet.

"(and nuclear powered to boot)"

I think very little of what the US has would not be allowed to be purchased
by Australia if we asked for it, including Nuclear powered submarines.

And that is just one source, plenty of others.

Dove tailing into US build or even 2nd hand would be cheaper.

500N
 

It was only the analogue transmitters that got turned off last Tuesday.If you are enjoying a TV free household,then don't tell anyone :)

I have a new TV, big flat screen etc. Just haven't plugged it in.

I hardly watch TV.

Don't we have some Australian law or rule that prohibits us having nuclear powered submarines? Tell me if I'm wrong, but I thought I'd read something about it...

You have a point, but even allowing for Work Car Syndrome I've also driven Toyotas, Fords and Hyundais for work and they weren't as buggy, though in fairness the Toyotas came close. The Aussie built Fords were okay but the Commodores were a nightmare.

I had an early 1980s Commodore and it was a great car, but I don't think their current product matches what's coming out of Japan and Korea. Just because it made sense to manufacture cars locally back in 1948 doesn't mean it makes sense now, particularly when the stats show people aren't buying nearly as many of them.
2012 Australian new car sales | FCAI VFACTS sales | new car sales
From the article above: "Three of the top ten are also built locally, dispelling any suggestion that our domestic manufacturers aren’t producing cars that Australians want to buy," Weber says".
I don't see that as a good result.

Worrals ..... " some Australian rule that prohibits us having nuclear powered submarines"?
Hopefully the 30 year or whatever rule applies to the following .... but the RAAF P3C Orions certainly had the capability, ie. wiring/plugs etc. for nuclear weapons when delivered to Australia.

Wasn't the F-111 Nuclear capable ?

Pretty sure it was.

You could almost guarantee that we paid a squillion dollars to have that capability removed.

Re nuclear powered submarines: we're talking nuclear propulsion, a totally different animal to nuclear weapons. With the ranges involved with any Australian submarine operational deployment beyond an afternoon training dive, nuclear propulsion is the only sane option for our next generation of submarines. Putting our sailors to sea in a time of war in anything other than a nuke is tantamount to consigning them to certain death.

However, as I've noted above, that will have little to no impact on the decision that will be made about a replacement for the ill-fated Collins Class. Jobs in marginal electorates in South Australia will be deemed far more important than anything so passe as operational effectiveness and cost efficiency.

Someone elsewhere has said that the Department of Defence would be more accurately name the Department of Defence Industry.

I know the difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion ;). However, when I was reading about Australia's different submarines (after a trip to the Sydney Maritime Museum last year :8) I recall reading somewhere that Australia was limited to diesel powered subs for some reason, hence the Collins Class. Like you, I thought it was a really dumb idea.

Possibly I've imagined it; I can't find the reference offhand.

While those aircraft were nuclear capable I didn't think we'd ever had any nuclear weapons on-shore, at least not that anyone was admitting to :suspect:.

If you want a nuclear sub just tell the Yanks that you dont want them and make a law about it, sure as night follows day they will try to force you to have one.

Andu

They might die but sure as hell they would take a few ships with them.

The Aussie subs have consistently managed to get close to US Fleets
and I think they even took a photo of a US Aircraft carrier through the
periscope ! (How to piss of the yanks !!!).

Whether they would get away again is a different matter.


Worrals
"While those aircraft were nuclear capable I didn't think we'd ever had any nuclear weapons on-shore, at least not that anyone was admitting to"

No, we just detonated a heap of them at Woomera :rolleyes:

Then again, it is such an arsehole of a place, no one really cares !:O

Of course, my mistake.
However, I meant for use against enemies rather than for testing.

Andu ...agree with you regarding nuclear powered subs, they'd be a bit quieter as well which I would have thought was a bit important.
Ref. the weapons/power thing I thought that Worrals was musing about things nuclear in general.
500N Only 19 of the P3C had the wiring for nuclear stuff. I pulled the wiring out of the first one before the RAAF found out their mistake. Having said that why did the RAAF want the nuclear capacity if we were never to have nukes ?

The US has historically been very, very keen on the idea of leasing us a few Virginia class submarines. Defence has already fitted many of the Virginia combat systems to the Collins, so it's a sensible upgrade. It's also in Uncle Sam's strategic interest to have a close ally with a strong submarine capability in this corner of the pacific.

The only real issue is that we don't have the support infrastructure here to look after the nuclear propulsion systems, but there's no reason we couldn't outsource the heavy maintenance work on the power plant to the USA while operating and maintaining the rest of the boats ourselves.

The argument about nuclear versus conventional subs has been around awhile. The general official reason is the "quiter" bit. And its been stated that the Yanks are happy for us to go down that path for that reason, as it compliments their capability.

I would presume a decision to go nuclear would be extremely contentious if it was decided to go that way. I would also imagine the maintenance requirements for such, also goes to a whole new paradigm.

Mind you I would gather the yanks would be more happier if we actually had quite subs that worked:p

bank runner

Thanks, good info.

I knew about the lack of support being an issue.


In the last 10 years or so, I have been surprised at how quickly the US
has said yes to technology that they don't normally allow out of the US
or only to a restricted few. We have and are definitely flavour of the decade !!!

I don't think we will ever go Nuclear !