redandblack wrote:Oh, Psyber, what a disappointing response. I have to give you some credit, though, for such a partisan diversion of breathtaking irrelevance.
I recall a Labor Treasurer being forced to resign (I think it was John Kerin) for not knowing what some economic initials stood for and he was regarded as a laughing stock because of it.
I suppose Barnaby escapes criticism, not because of a wimp right-wing press, but because everyone knows he actualy is an economic buffoon.
I'm not defending Barnaby Joyce in any way - as I said I didn't see or hear it. So, I have no comment on that.
The job loss issue is something I care about though - there has always been an employment problem for those with limited retraining capacity, and I used to work in the area of assisting them.
I did, and still do, think that dropping tariff barriers and killing off our manufacturing base, which provided low level process work for those who didn't have the intellectual skills to be retrained for higher tech jobs was a major mistake, and that suggesting they would all move into jobs created by the IT boom was naive, to say the least. It was, and is, sad because, now that we are all used to much cheaper manufactured commodities than could ever be produced here, those jobs are not recoverable.