First: Judith Sloan has a piece with all the analytical depth of Nelson Muntz going "ha ha". Seems she can't actually find a way to blame the union (noting that they have made wage cut concessions), but that doesn't stop her with an implied "AWU. Phff. What do you expect..." And same with the electricity prices increases which haven't actually happened yet.
So it's to John Durrie to get some actual detail as to what has gone wrong with the company, and he ends with a pretty compelling sounding:
To suggest the company’s failure is anything more than failed business strategy compounded by cyclical markets is a nonsense and that is where the argument starts and finishes.As for the political responses: I thought Christopher Pyne came across pretty well on 7.30 last night. It's remarkable how working for Turnbull has made him sound a much more reasonable politician.
On the Labor side and the suggestion of (I think) some protectionist motivated unionists that cheap steel from China is potentially dangerous: that does raise a good point - what sort of quality control is there for imported steel? Obviously, the company overseas manufacturing it would say it meets a set of specifications or standards, but do nations importing it have any systems for quality testing to see whether it does meet them? Or is it up to private enterprise to do that? How much of each shipload would you have to test to be confident that a batch is fine?
That's something I have no idea about, but I would hope there is some system of quality testing.
The Peroxide Princess is a joke. It had too much debt to start with and then gained more. Add that to a failed business strategy and it is easy to see why it failed.
ReplyDeleteI can understand why she writes such rubbish at Catallaxy. but the Australian pays her!