Odd Happenings in OZ.

Diwundrin

Diwundrin

Well-known Member
Location
Nth Coast NSW Australia
A 'spate' of shark attacks... a whole 3 in a year... have motivated a Council to kill any sharks that venture close enough.
This has spurred mass outbreaks of cardboard squares on sticks and angry protesters Nation wide.
We don't have much else to protest about I guess. :cool:

Coincidentally 3 pedestrians have been skittled by buses in Sydney in a little over a week but no buses or their drivers have been culled in retaliation.

There is much effort being expended to explain to the morons in the Council that the increase in shark attacks might just be down to there being so many more surfers and scuba divers thinking it's good idea to immerse themselves in notoriously shark infested waters lately. There are actually less sharks now than ever, we just offer them easier pickings now.

They lure the tourists there for the surfin' 'n scuba experience then get p*ssy when the sharks eat them. Fellas!! Think about it.!


There have also been some apparently paranormal incidents due to some demonic influence causing the inexplicable activation of the hydraulic systems of tilt trucks just as they are entering the underground traffic tunnels in Sydney. 3 of them too! WooOOOooo.

The resulting damage is spectacular, sparks and smoke and panic abounding in following traffic all caught on CCTV and aired on the nightly News. Arial footage of the resulting gridlock is then added. Great stuff!

Not a single driver admitted to the incident being his fault in any way so the Devil musta dun it. Right?

But the strangest thing of all has been the amazing announcement from the Feds that instead of wasting money on bailing out foreign National manufacturers of cars that no one wants to buy, they are putting the money to funding relief benefits for farmers and graziers who haven't had rain since July 2012 and who are at the point of shooting their stock, themselves, but hopefully first their bank managers and local politicians.

Wow, an intelligent move from Canberra, who'da thort?

Definitely some kind of wooOOoo going on. :cool::alien::grin:
 
I am appalled that they are culling the sharks, after all it's their turf. But maybe the reason the sharks are coming in closer is they are looking for food which is not as abundant as used to be due to the mega trawling for seafood done by the fishermen these days, you can't tell me the lot is used, just a thought that has been on my mind for a long time.:grrr::notfair:
 
Diwundrin said:
A 'spate' of shark attacks... a whole 3 in a year... have motivated a Council to kill any sharks that venture close enough.
This has spurred mass outbreaks of cardboard squares on sticks and angry protesters Nation wide.
We don't have much else to protest about I guess. :cool:

Coincidentally 3 pedestrians have been skittled by buses in Sydney in a little over a week but no buses or their drivers have been culled in retaliation.

There is much effort being expended to explain to the morons in the Council that the increase in shark attacks might just be down to there being so many more surfers and scuba divers thinking it's good idea to immerse themselves in notoriously shark infested waters lately. There are actually less sharks now than ever, we just offer them easier pickings now.

They lure the tourists there for the surfin' 'n scuba experience then get p*ssy when the sharks eat them. Fellas!! Think about it.!


There have also been some apparently paranormal incidents due to some demonic influence causing the inexplicable activation of the hydraulic systems of tilt trucks just as they are entering the underground traffic tunnels in Sydney. 3 of them too! WooOOOooo.

The resulting damage is spectacular, sparks and smoke and panic abounding in following traffic all caught on CCTV and aired on the nightly News. Arial footage of the resulting gridlock is then added. Great stuff!

Not a single driver admitted to the incident being his fault in any way so the Devil musta dun it. Right?

But the strangest thing of all has been the amazing announcement from the Feds that instead of wasting money on bailing out foreign National manufacturers of cars that no one wants to buy, they are putting the money to funding relief benefits for farmers and graziers who haven't had rain since July 2012 and who are at the point of shooting their stock, themselves, but hopefully first their bank managers and local politicians.

Wow, an intelligent move from Canberra, who'da thort?

Definitely some kind of wooOOoo going on. :cool::alien::grin:
Click to expand...

http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/agribusiness/general-news/sour-taste-for-shepparton/2686504.aspx
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/labor-turns-up-the-heat-with-30m-pledge-to-help-secure-spc-ardmona-in-shepparton/story-fni0fit3-1226816834663


No Holden but a tin can ???????
 
It's a damn shame that the Government can't help SPC, what with all the imported fruit Coles & Woolies are importing you won't be able to buy real australian canned fruit, i used to buy the canned fruit & other goods straight from their factory and Phants has an outlet in Albury, beautiful fruit it is. The public need to realise that by buying the woollies or coles brands they are digging the grave deeper for Australian companies, look at the Aussie orchards they have to bury their fruit as the supermarkets are buying the crap stuff from overseas, how heartbreaking that is for them, if i can't buy Australian fruit i go without. :sosad::soangry::grrr:
 
I wouldn't worry 'bout it. If Coca Cola don't want to fix it up without a bribe I'm sure there's a Chinese business man just busting to throw up a new one and run it at half the costs. :cool:
 
Jillaroo said:
It's a damn shame that the Government can't help SPC, what with all the imported fruit Coles & Woolies are importing you won't be able to buy real australian canned fruit, i used to buy the canned fruit & other goods straight from their factory and Phants has an outlet in Albury, beautiful fruit it is. The public need to realise that by buying the woollies or coles brands they are digging the grave deeper for Australian companies, look at the Aussie orchards they have to bury their fruit as the supermarkets are buying the crap stuff from overseas, how heartbreaking that is for them, if i can't buy Australian fruit i go without. :sosad::soangry::grrr:
Click to expand...
What is the set up for orchardists, do they sell their fruit direct to the supermarkets or canning factory.?
 
Orchardists are the prey being fed upon by a pack of Supermarket chains and the Coke/Amatil congloms. They are on a hiding to nothing and I wonder why they don't all just down tools and walk away sometimes. We've become spoiled into demanding the best of everything for as close to nothing as we can get it for and politicians have allowed voter greed and wheeler dealer business interests to give us that at the cost of killing the golden goose. Our loss ultimately.

Some big wheel in China was quoted as saying they would take all your export fruit if we can get it. That's 'food' for thought isn't it?
When they finish buying us out they can do exactly that and take the domestic allocation too. How much will imported fruit cost? S.African peaches are on special sometimes, not as good as SPC's though.

People here demand Politicians block 'Foreign take overs' but do nothing to support local growers by paying them what they're worth.
When we want everything for nothing then nothing is what we'll be left with.
When the growers go broke and walk off the land then no one else wants to buy it... except foreign investors!

Can't have it all ways folks, we get what we pay for.

We started on the downhill when some brainsnap decision was made to sign trade deals which lifted tariffs on imports but still allowed our trading partners to impose them on our exports! What mental giant did that eh?

I'm not in favour of subsidizing manufacturing carte blanche but do believe that vital industries be protected. Bribing Kodak to stay open and not add to the unemployment figures before the next election was a case in point. Long ago but still relevant. Millions were given them to keep the factory going. They spent nothing on maintenance, just took the money, waited the allotted time and walked out anyway with the cash. So would GMH ! as did Ford. Those were businesses running at a loss with no prospect of ever competing with Asian manufacturers.

But food processing plants are very different consideration. If it takes a bribe at least short term then so be it until we work out how to run a cannery without the ludicrous wages and costs associated with it presently. Pollies need to get their heads out of their polling figures and take a look at how to jerk the profiteering of the Supermarket chains and to educate the population into realising they need to pay for what they get.

And they need to clamp tarrifs back on items that we produce and need to keep producing to protect them from vanishing forever under the cheap competition from over seas.

One size doesn't have to fit all! We need to get a bit adaptable in our 'policies' and stop signing stupid 'Kyoto' type conventions which handicap us to impress the bloody UN. They won't be growing any peaches for us!
 
I had a stray thought in the bath this morning. It's still a bit undeveloped as yet.

Instead of blocking overseas investment I think we should ask big investors to post a bond with the government the same way a tenant does when renting premises. They could top it up each year in line with inflation, wage rises, value of the investment etc (I told you that it's a bit undercooked so far). This would provide the government with a fund which could be used to lend money at attractive interest rates to foreign businesses that want to upgrade but not to relocate or close down. For the latter case, the forfeited bond and the fund could provide start up capital for new industries in regions badly affected by the parent company withdrawing their capital and enterprise.

The Goulburn Valley used to have SPC and Ardmona until taken over by Coca Cola. Soon they will have a crop but no cannery and no business infrastructure to handle marketing the fruit. That's where the money should be spent.

By the way, Di, the Liberal MP for that area has refuted the nonsense about wages being the root cause of the problem

Liberal MP Sharman Stone accuses Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey of lying over SPC Ardmona's workplace agreement

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...e-agreement-20140204-31y52.html#ixzz2sJGkdHTP
Click to expand...
 
A bit more on this topic from The Business Spectator.

[h=1]SPCA workers are cannon fodder in a different war[/h]



Something very dangerous is happening within the debate over the government's decision not to 'co-invest' $25 million to upgrade SPC Ardomona's Shepparton plant.





SPCA workers earning around $50,000 a year are being used as cannon fodder in the Abbott government's war against a legitimate enemy – the construction unions that have pushed up construction costs and engaged in corrupt activities.

What is at risk now is what should be a large growth industry – innovative packaged fruit products with strong export outlooks. The industry around Shepparton looks likely to be shut down to allow the Abbott government to present a united front against the union moment (A rogue Liberal spills the beans on SPCA, January 31).

These two matters must be untangled and treated separately. Lives, families and communities are being risked in one sector to pay for the sins of another. While this decision was justified in terms of SPCA's 'excessive' enterprise bargaining arrangements, the company's workers are already receiving pay well below the average manufacturing wage ($67,000), and far below general full-time weekly earnings of $74,000, as Fairfax's Ben Schneiders documented last week.

The wages issue is a smoke-screen. This government does not, in principle, have anything against careful co-investment to stimulate job creation. That can be seen clearly by looking at its actions elsewhere – and the $100 million 'Economic Growth Plan for Tasmania' is a case in point.

That plan helped the Abbott-led Coalition pick up three seats in Tasmania at the 2013 election, and was blithely waved through by media commentators. After all, Tassie's unemployment rate of 7.7 per cent is the nation's worst, right?
Well, sort of. Member for Murray Sharman Stone points out that the Shepparton region has an unemployment rate of 8.5 per cent. Her figures come from disaggregated data from Centrelink covering the City of Greater Shepparton areas.
Click to expand...

For Australians interested in a more complete coverage see http://www.businessspectator.com.au.../spca-workers-are-cannon-fodder-different-war
 
This one's for Di.

It's true, some very odd things are happening over here.
The Daily Telegraph, using the very best investigative journalists, has summed it up nicely

 
I'm only going on what I heard read out from their wages and conditions contract on radio this morning.. like. extra penalty rates for when the floors are wet. Really? they never get washed down in a cannery, that'd be a worry. 50 grand a year base rate doesn't sound bad for a factory line job to me but I'm a bit out of date with current levels. Do they need Uni degrees to spot and toss rotten fruit now?

But that aside yes no doubt it's a strategic move on busting the unions to at least some extent. .. BUT .. we are competing with Asia who have NO unions. Sad for Asians, but it's a fact of life that we must live with. We can lower our standards a little to compete, or we can hang on to what we have until it is all snatched away entirely and no one will have an unskilled job to quibble about at all.

I don't believe either side of the argument is all right or wrong. Unions and Business both need to rejig their thinking on this. There will be no winners if the business' have no customers who can afford their products and Unions will have no members if they price them out of the job market. The way private enterprise versus Unions is set up is getting to the lose/lose stage and we need to have a hard think about finding some middle ground that allows freedom to move by both sides.

Socialism scares me but so does Feudalism and that's where we're headed. A few rich and landed gentry and rest of us serfs.

See? You're not the only one who can indulge in fantasies because I really can't see any of them thinking beyond their next paycheck or bottom line, or election.

I like your bathtub dream. That's the kind of thing that needs to be implemented. Did you hear what I did that the thinking in China is that any foreign property owned becomes 'sovereign territory?' It may not be legal, or even true but it does gel with Asian thinking.

We need a lot smarter people to draw up foreign ownership 'leases' than the idiots who have been making trade deals lately that's for sure and certain!

Yes we need foreign investment because we can longer afford to buy our own Country. But we also need some pretty fancy protection of ownership and I like your 'bond' idea.

But.. again, sorry.. would any foreign investors take up that offer when they can bluff us out of it in the long run? It could come down to 'take it or leave it' and can we afford to 'leave it?' Why would they risk an investment in a Country that can't even run it's own manufacturing and agricultural industries at a profit? They're gonna wonder why aren't they?
 
Warrigal said:
This one's for Di.

It's true, some very odd things are happening over here.
The Daily Telegraph, using the very best investigative journalists, has summed it up nicely

Click to expand...

:lofl:

Re that ABC thing. Presume you watched Q&A and how Plibersek did her haughty po-faced hatchet job on Abbott's heinous attempts to stamp on freedom of the press when it doesn't report what he likes? Enjoy that?

Did I miss it, or did everyone else on the panel miss the point that it was HER party that tried to get legislation passed to censor the Murdoch press when it was doing a job on them!?

Barnaby needs his backside kicked for missing that sitting shot! I was on it like a tonna bricks and woke the dog up screaming at the TV! He's a politician, it's his job to smack that disgraceful hipocrasy down!

Why doesn't that curtailment of freedom of the press move by Labor ever get thrown back in their faces? Should I write to Abbott and tell 'em to get their act together and learn a bit of street fighting?

For Labor to take the haughty high ground on ethical dealings is farce at pantomime level.


PS, I see the ABC, Jones anyway, was happy to let the innuendo that Abbott was somehow behind spying on Indo go through to the keeper.
One brief comment was made, drowned out by Jones that is was the LABOR government who did the spying. Now the fallout is all Abbott's fault... how exactly does that work?
 
If we have what they want, they'll bite.

We have a lot to trade on besides the raw commodities. Low sovereign risk, infrastructure already available, local and overseas markets and despite the vilification of unions, because of them, a workforce that is reliable and educated. Management is pretty much a dream run under those conditions and profit is steady and generally predictable.

There's a big difference IMO between a foreign group that builds an enterprise up from scratch and one that comes in and takes over an established business/industry using the share market. Half the time they only want to strip the assets.
 
No, you didn't miss it but both pollies were backing away at the rate of knots not to talk about who spies on whom. Joyce was choking and wanted to shout out "But Labor did it, not us!". There must be some sort of bipartisan gag in place.

Censor the Murdoch press? I don't think so. As I remember it, it was a general thrust against racial vilification.
Can you find an objective analysis of what was being proposed - anyone except Ray Hadley or Alan Jones ?
 
I haven't listened to either for at least 13 years Warri. They don't carry their feeds on radio here, not did I listen to them in Singleton.

It had nothing to do with 'vilification'... that bespectacled buffoon who proposed the bill was whinging about 'biased reporting' of Labor party stuff ups and character assassinations in the 'gutter' press. Don't try making it something virtuous, it wasn't.
 
I'll come back to that one later but in the mean time - re allowances at SPC

SPC Ardmona rejects allowance claims, as MP Sharman Stone accuses PM of lying



SPC Ardmona has hit back at claims its enterprise agreement is overly generous, as Liberal MP Sharman Stone accused Tony Abbott of "lying'' about the company's plight to shift the focus on to unions.


Rejecting a $25 million plea for assistance from the company last week, the Prime Minister said SPC Ardmona must axe allowances and loadings that were "well in excess of the award''.

But the fruit processing company today said allowances for workers accounted for just 0.1 per cent of its business costs in 2013.
It also demolished claims its workers received nine weeks annual leave, saying they received 20 days a year.

Earlier, local Liberal MP Sharman Stone attacked Mr Abbott and senior ministers for blaming the company's difficulties on workers' pay and conditions. "What they said was, `we're not going to help because it is the amazing wages and conditions that have knocked this company for six', and that is just wrong,'' she told ABC radio. "They're not speaking the reality ... It's not the truth.'' She said "lying was unparliamentarily language, but, "that's right, it's lying''. Dr Stone said the company had already done the "hard yards'' in undertaking a major workforce restructure and it was unfair to suggest workers were to blame for the plight of the company.

"What they explained as the reason for not supporting SPCA, which was basically awards and conditions, was about focusing on unions. It wasn't about the realities of the last standing fruit preserving industry,'' she said. Dr Stone said reporting on an array of allowances available to SPC Ardmona workers was "mischievous'' and "a complete furphy".

The Australian Financial Review this week reported SPC Ardmona Workers received nine weeks annual leave, and benefited from an array of allowances. Treasurer Joe Hockey said if the reported benefits were true, they were "astounding''.

But Dr Stone said the heat allowance was not unreasonable as it gave workers a 10 minute cold drink break in extreme heat. A wet allowance was for cleaners who worked with caustic materials to buy their own protective clothing.

Last week, Mr Abbott said it was crucial that SPC Ardmona completed a renegotiation of its enterprise agreement.
"There are wet allowances, there are loadings, there are extensive provisions to cash out sick leave, there are extremely generous redundancy provisions well in excess of the award.

"This does need to be very extensively renegotiated if this restructure is to be completed and I have to say, as SPC and (parent company Coca-Cola Amatil) go about this renegotiation, they'll certainly have the support of government in doing so.''
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, who argued for the company to be thrown the $25 million lifeline, said at the time that if the company could alter its workplace conditions, it could be made profitable once again.

But Mr Kelly said the business had been damaged by a "perfect storm'' caused by external economic factors, including the high Australian dollar, the dumping of cheap imported fruit, and adverse weather in the form of floods, drought and frosts.


A bit more here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...uses-pm-of-lying/story-fn59noo3-1226817307657
Click to expand...

I predict a short parliamentary career for Dr Sharman Stone.
 
It had nothing to do with 'vilification'... that bespectacled buffoon who proposed the bill was whinging about 'biased reporting' of Labor party stuff ups and character assassinations in the 'gutter' press. Don't try making it something virtuous, it wasn't.
Click to expand...

More details, please. I've been trying to Google up a reference to what you are hinting at, but with no luck.

I did find this - http://theconversation.com/commercial-tv-murdoch-and-censorship-17823 - but I don't think that is what you are talking about.

Could it have been something about this?

 
Yep that was the stuff going on at the time that got Conlon (remembered his name finally) fired up. But at least Rupe pays his own way, the ABC is funded by the taxpayer and we expect a better effort at balance than the likes of Tony Jones offers.

I don't buy Rupe's rags so he costs me nuthin. But I do pay for the ABC and if I want to read and hear only lefty bias I would buy a Socialist rag. Just saying, it cuts both ways.

Don't mistake my thinking as being swayed by Rupe's press, it simply echoes my own opion, it doesn't influence it. I probably see more of the ABC than you do and that sure doesn't influence me either.
 
The sharks should be left alone the sea is their territory.
Its a shame SPC is going under,I thought they were owned by CocaCola Amitil,if so why are they not helping them out when they make so much profit every year?
 
Apparently the story goes that they will pump a fair few million into upgrading it but are trying their luck in getting the government to chip in with a bit too. Bit of a vexed question really.
No matter which way it goes Abbott will get a hammering for it. He'll be accused of either 'Giving in to big biz.' or 'Selling out our local battlers to make a political point.' There just ain't no way to please everyone.
 
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