by ROGER CROOK – AUSTRALIA is no longer self-reliant, and its self-sufficiency is no longer a national ambition.
We are surrounded by oceans and lack any capacity to ensure that the sea lanes, vital to our very existence, remain open.
- What is Australia’s national objective? Do we have a national ambition?
- Perhaps the prospect of now making our bricks in America will make Albanese come to his senses; maybe not.
- There’s nothing we can do as we watch our national structure and ambition crumble under the impracticability of Labor ideology.
This morning a commentator on Sky TV, who knows what he is talking about, said that it is now cheaper to make bricks in New York and transport them to Australia than it is to make them in Sydney. Let that sink in for a moment.
Apparently, the main reason is the price of gas. Making bricks is not rocket science, is it? They are baked clay and require a lot of heat to produce.
STUPIDITY
So it is stupidity on steroids that as one of the biggest gas exporters in the world, we are screwing our own brick industry and no doubt many others, by charging far too much for our own gas.
This raises the question about who runs the Australian economy – the government or the international mining and resource companies?
I have heard silly stories like that one before, unbelievable stories like the one of shipping Australian timber overseas so that it can be pulped and sent back to Australia to be made into paper products.
Recently, I was talking to a structural engineer about cross laminated timber (CLT). He told me he imported his from Scandinavia.
I asked why, and he said the imported product has a better finish and needs no further attention when used indoors as a feature.
I asked about price, hinting that the CLT that we make here in Western Australia must be cheaper.
He said prices were directly comparable; when I raised my eyebrows, he explained that during COVID, as the price of the imported product started to increase due to shipping shortages, local producer increased prices to match the imports.
Is it any wonder this nation is up to its neck in debt and suffocating in a cesspool of self-interest at the expence of what is best for the country?
That raises an important question; what is Australia’s national objective? Do we have a national ambition?
Has this government now in its second term set a national objective which has fired up, ignited the population to strive for a better life or are we passively drowning in the mire of an ever-expanding dependency on the welfare State?
When I came to Australia sixty years ago the national ambition was overwhelming, in all walks of life it was palpable.
Proud under the Southern Cross there was nothing that Australia couldn’t do and didn’t do when it set its mind to it; including beating the Poms at cricket.
That’s all gone now. Last week they burnt the National Flag and cheered as ninety thousand marched over Sydney Harbour Bridge to the applause, chants and demands of international terrorists.
In those days, not so long ago, Japan was just starting to export motor vehicles and South Korea hadn’t started; look at them now, both giants in international engineering and all we do is supply them with the vital ingredients for their success, iron ore and coal.
WRONG
Japan is going to build three warships they have designed for the Royal Australian Navy. Another eight of the same Japanese design will, hopefully, be built in Western Australia.
Something has gone wrong because during WWII, 113 RAN vessels were built in ten Australian dockyards, including 60 Corvettes.
During the same period Australian dockyards repaired 4000 ships for the RAN, the Royal Navy and the Americans.
In the past twenty years or so a torpor of acceptance of dependence on others has consumed us as a nation.
It is as if there is nothing we can do as we watch our national structure and ambition crumble under the weight and the impracticability of Labor ideology and welfare dependence.
We are no longer major achievers; we have become reliant on others for almost everything we need; from warships to boots and shoes and everything in between, including and ever increasingly, for our food.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shown that he has little interest in the structure of Australia; he is blind to the profit an Australian company could generate by making bricks in America and exporting them to Australia to build the half million houses that he knows we desperately need.
He fails to see how ludicrous that would be as he spends our money on a super computer in California and on the fantasy of hydrogen to save the world.
If the prospect of importing bricks from America is absurd; think about this; we already import potatoes from Europe.
What is it about this man who masquerades as a leader, a man that allows the wheels to fall off the national economy while he plans his next intercontinental trip to rub shoulders with world leaders and opine about matters like Gaza, Hamas and Israel, over which he has no control and cannot influence?
I wonder if the “Handsome Boy” plays the fiddle, because his Rome is burning!
It must soon become obvious to the Australian people that the world of international politics, business and trade, is pissing on Albanese’s swag; soon they must see that their leader has become irrelevant both at home and abroad.
If Albanese wants to do something about rejuvenating industry in Australia and lift productivity he need look no further than the mother of Australia, agriculture.
We are a nation of 27m people, with a climate that runs from the tropical to the temperate, where there is nothing apart from the totally exotic that we cannot grow and add value to.
Yet, in spite of that enviable birthright, we are importing ever increasing amounts of food, much of it from the other side of the world and at the expense of Australian farmers and food processors.
If the trend continues in 2025-26 Australia will import food worth $30b; that is the value of the food landed in Australia; much of it after a 16,000 km trip by sea in a refrigerated container.
I calculate the retail value of that food at about $50b or more.
For simplicity let’s say it is $52b. How much of that billion dollars a week Australian consumers are spending on imported food could be grown and have value added to it here in Australia?
The answer is most if not all of it. Sixty years ago we were, to all intents and purposes, self-sufficient in food and we exported vast quantities all over the world.
ECONOMY
When looking at the statistics it is obvious that either the Australian government does not know or does not care about the damage imported foods are doing to Australian agriculture, the food processing industry and, most importantly, the national economy.
Meanwhile, the Opposition – and particularly the so-called champion of rural Australia, the National Party – are seemingly blind to the destruction of the capacity of our food processing industry being caused.
Labor have never had an interest in agriculture; the National Party are lazy and have not bothered, at great cost to their constituency, to access the freely available statistics.
Nobody should be surprised that our biggest source of imported food is New Zealand, they are our cousins across the “ditch”, and account for about 16 per cent of the food we import.
Second on the list is America with about 10 per cent. Third, believe it or not, is Singapore with about 8 per cent of all food imports. Fourth incredibly, is China, with a little less than Singapore.
There are some anomalies in our trade with the Kiwis. Dairy products, fish and frozen vegetables are the main categories.
It has been shown in the past that our “cousins” have imported frozen vegetables from China and re-packaged and re-exported those products to Australia and so taking full advantage of an FTA with both China and Australia.
Whether that sleight of hand continues is hard to determine, the statistics are confusing to say the least.
Surrounded by oceans, it is absurd that here in Australia we import 70 per cent of the fish we eat, it crosses the oceans from whence it came from New Zealand, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and of all places, Norway.
No doubt the Kiwis fish the “ditch” and others fish farm when we can’t be bothered; or maybe in an attempt to save the world here in Australia we have created ocean sanctuaries where nobody can fish? Whatever the reason 27 million of us, surrounded by oceans, rely on imported fish for our daily diet.
This article has just scratched the surface of what is an important subject; one which raises the question as to who is running the Australian economy and what influence is government prepared to exert on the major players in the retail food industry in the interest of the nation?
The bald facts are frightening. It is evident that the major retailers of food in Australia, Coles and Woolworths, who control 67 per cent of food sales in Australia, by their very actions, do not put the interests of Australian food producers and processors and so this nation, above their obsession for increasing their market share and profit.
IBIS World, Australia’s premier market research company has some sober predictions for Australian food growers and processors.
Research conducted by IBIS shows that the Australian fruit and vegetable processors are grappling with intense and increasing competition and declining profits because the major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, are flooding the market with private-label brands sourced from overseas.
This has caused local processors to reduce prices and so erode profit margins.
What IBIS has researched can be found in every supermarket. Frozen processed potatoes and a range of vegetables from the Netherlands and Belgium are everywhere. In a nation that grows the best wheat in the world we buy imported cereals and pasta.
Italy has 70 per cent of the tinned tomato business in Australia.
How can it be cheaper to grow, process and package food in Europe and transport it 16,000 km in a refrigerated container than it is to grow, process and package in Australia?
PORK
Almost all the bacon and processed meat we eat is imported from America and Europe; the only local product is fresh pork.
The shelves are full of bottled and canned fruit from of all places, China. It stands side by side with Australian produce in identical packaging, the only way to tell the difference is to read the label.
Coles and Woolworths are powerful companies; they control the prices in food retailing. It is now apparent that they scour the world for the cheapest food they can find, and they don’t care if that damages Australian food growers and puts Australian processors out of business.
Bottled peaches and other fruits are the perfect example. Imported from China and cheaper than produce from the Riverina.
That raises the question as to who is it that controls the Australian economy, the government or big business?
It is quite obvious by their ever increasing purchases of food from overseas at the expence of Australian producers and industry, Coles and Woolworths and to a lesser extent Aldi, whose shelves are always well stocked with goods from Germany and Europe, are more interested in their profit than they are about Australia’s food independence and the success of Australian agriculture and horticulture.
No doubt, the price of electricity and gas has a big influence on the viability of food growing and processing in Australia; cold rooms and factories are energy intensive operations.
Perhaps the example of making our bricks in America will make “Blackout Bowen” and Albanese come to their senses; maybe not.
The price of electricity and gas must be reduced in Australia if we are to have a food processing industry; that will never ever be achieved while we throw billions at the unachievable net-zero.
The final straw could well be fertilizer. The world cannot grow food without nitrogen. Nitrogen as urea is made from natural gas. We import urea from China, our biggest customer for gas.
Australia imports more than 90 per cent of the urea it requires. Cut off the urea supply and the food just won’t grow. Game, set and match? PC
This article brings up a multitude of issues….it also shows up the problem of any Party having an overwhelming majority in Lower and Upper House PLUS an ineffectual Opposition. Whatever election issues helped a Party (in this case, Labor) into office, each voter voted for a different mix of policies that attracted their attention. Trouble is: a lot of OTHER issues might be quite repellent but the voter votes for a grab-bag of either Party’s policies anyway. In other words, for the next three years, we all have to take the good with the bad. What a foolish trade-off!
There is a solution: the Citizens-Initiated Referendum procedure. As in Switzerland and several American jurisdictions. This allows a Government to govern, but not to legislate specific laws that may not have post-election community support. It can refine, repeal or reverse bad legislation on an issue-by-issue basis and still allow a Government to implement the bulk of their election promises. Otherwise, we are all at the mercy of a multi-majority government and feckless Opposition ramming through policies that were not even the subject of any election “mandate”.