Wednesday 10 January 2007
Conservatives fighting amongst themselves
I love it when the Conservatives fight amongst themselves. Vaile has come out dismissing Hewson's attack, but if they're fighting off attacks from their own side, they're not focusing on our agenda. This government is old and tired, devoid of fresh policy. They've had nearly 11 years. Enough is enough.
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3 comments:
While on the subject of Vaile, (heaven forbid anything important happens while he's acting PM) and by extension, Trade...While in his Shadow, you must have picked up a bit on the niceties of ABS reporting....Could you please explain whether things are actually radically on the up and up (as one could be forgiven for thinking ) from today's ABC report ..."Australia's trade deficit came in at $843 million, down nearly $700 million", a turnaround of some 45%?
The actual ABS report has "an INCREASE of $39m on the revised DEFICIT in October" in trend estimates terms, but "a DECREASE of $665m on the revised deficit" in seasonally adjusted terms, whatever they are.
The chart suggests to my untrained eye that we are still heading south. Could you please give us a heads up on whether the turnaround that will probably be claimed is a reporting artifact, or real?
And what are youse lot gonna do about what is a veritable roadtrain of a trade deficit, whichever way you look at it ?
Sincerely, GoodToBeWithYou,
who happens to proudly be a Griffith elector
Thanks for the comment GoodToBeWithYou, and I'm pleased to hear from someone in my electorate.
Look, the reality of the trade deficit is that we are in a woeful position. Over the past five years:
* the volume of goods and services exports has grown by a miserly 1.3% with goods exports growing by 1.6% and services exports growing by just 0.2%;
* goods exports to our major markets of Japan and Korea have stagnated;
* goods exports have gone backwards, declining by 2.4% to the US and by 3.7% to Taiwan;
* manufactured exports have grown by just 0.2% while manufactured imports have increased by 5.3%;
* food exports have grown by only 0.5% while food imports have grown by 6.9%;
* services exports have declined to major markets including the US by 2.6% and Japan by 2.5%;
* Australia’s share of world goods exports has declined from 0.99% to 0.94%; and
* Australia’s share of world services exports has declined from 1.23% to 1.16%.
As I said back in early December:
"We have a future with new knowledge-intensive industries, but it is one where government must be engaged, not just sitting idly by, watching from the sidelines.
"I come from a long background in state government and I know what it takes to get key industrial projects going, and let me tell you it doesn't happen with the government sitting over there waiting for some magic to occur."
We've recently put together a new export strategy – one that addresses the fundamental causes of our export decline and ensures Australia can exploit the tremendous opportunities arising in China’s services market for services providers.
"We've recently put together a new export strategy – one that addresses the fundamental causes of our export decline and ensures Australia can exploit the tremendous opportunities arising in China’s services market for services providers"....
Noice one Kev, would love to see some detail, I don't see it over there at the Blueprintorium... but, given the ubiquity of Beazely Gov't references, I guess there's quite a bit of catchup to do in the versioning department.
WRT delivering to China's services market... any chance your strategy will include developing the potentials of the natural competitive advantage (we have over our Western Economies competitors) devolving from the facts that
(a) we are in the Asian Timezone
(b) IP-implemented realtime interactive multimedia technologies work and
(c) English Language regulated education exports have been one of our few winners, bigger than wheat and wool, where we have credibility and critical mass? ( I mean, where would Oz Higher Ed be without overseas students, esp Chinese ones, footing the bills?)
I'm sure you can join the dots, without ending up with another NoddleNation diagram.
Of course being the broadband blackhole of Asia,...
( Thanks Ziggy et al, and didn't they do a great job, not, with Reach...."Telstra is expected to announce ...the final bill for bailing out Reach, its joint venture with PCCW (Pacific Century CyberWorks), could be $1 billion more than already indicated. This would be on top of write-downs of up to $2 billion Telstra has made on Reach and another PCCW joint venture, CSL." )
...is a bit of a hinderence but hey China is IPV6 and multicast and Grid enabled, they can provide the Servers and Software, we just have to provide The Services.
Mind you, China will jealously and sensibly be guarding its' Network Education Services Sector, including by setting technical standards and protocols, not just content quality(ies) assurence.
Your lot will be making sure potential Oz service providers are fully cognizent of these enabling standards and protocols won't you?
another couple of Stats for you..
据中国互联网络信息中心(CNNIC)在北京发布《第十八次中国互联网络发展状况统计报告》显示，截止到2006年6月30日，我国网民人数达到了1.23亿人，目前大约有1500万人经常使用网络教育
For the Chinese-Challenged out there reading this, machine-translation tells us "as of June 30, 2006 the number of Internet users in China has reached 123 million, there are about 15 million people regularly use the Internet education".
Any idea how many of those 15 million internet-educating toilers in our timezone will have Facility with Spoken English as a key Desired Vocational Prospect Education Enhancing Outcome?
Is that the sort of services market you have in mind?
Sincerely, GoodToBeWithYou
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