JC Political Thread - For All Things Political Part 2

[MasterOfReality]

What is the $200,000 tax break you speak of?

 

[J_D 2.0]

At least Labor is offering fee free TAFE places to encourage people into trades. What did the previous idiots do? I think they had some moronic brainfart like offering wealthy individuals a $200,000 tax break to renovate their investment properties. This made the situation worse, not better.

Tradies hardly have an interest in creating more competition in their own market. They will only begrudgingly put on apprentices insofar as they need a shitkicker to do the menial jobs.

Of the top of my head tradies are the only ones I can think of who have a closed shop and get to determine how much competition they have in their own market by not training apprentices.

I would be a mechanic right now if someone would have given me the opportunity when I left school but alas there wasn’t any apprenticeships available at the time.

Now we have a shortage of mechanics and you wait a minimum of two weeks and normally more than that just to get your car seen to. I wonder why????

 

[chrisp]

Of the top of my head tradies are the only ones I can think of who have a closed shop and get to determine how much competition they have in their own market by not training apprentices.

The medical profession runs a similar ‘closed shop’ scheme.

Like tradies, the medical profession is highly suspect of overseas qualifications. Apparently only Australia can train tradespeople and medical professionals ha ha ha!

 

[AirStrike]

What on earth are you on about?

What do you have against people that can dictate their own rate and jobs?

It doesn't fit with his socialist ideals. You will work for what you are told to work for and you will be grateful.

 

[OldBomb]

I remember hearing that 40% of the doctors operating (working) in Delhi weren't actually qualified to do so. There's a reason for that scepticism.
Friend's dad couldn't work as an Engineer because his qualifications from Burma weren't recognised. I also know another person, from the same region, who works as a nurse. I'd question her qualifications.

 

[Immortality]

The medical profession runs a similar ‘closed shop’ scheme.

Like tradies, the medical profession is highly suspect of overseas qualifications. Apparently only Australia can train tradespeople and medical professionals ha ha ha!

Apparently you guys love NZ doctors and nurses and tradies too!

I know the some Australian sectors recruit straight out of our universities. When my son graduated from his medical degree he was asked if he was applying to Melbourne or the UK? But he stayed local. My other son is in Queensland as a paramedic but he did it the hard way.

 

[Reaper]

This goes to my point, waste nuclear fuel needs to be re-cycled. The total amount could me much less if we had politicians that made good decisions.

Builders are collapsing because of their own stupidity & greed. they accept the work, along with people's money, without having the resources or skills to complete a job. project management requires years of experience & training, but of course idiots with a year 10 education think they can save some money & do it themselves.

I've seen overpaid MD's ruin a company in short order, short sighted, make the books look good this year but forgetting the long term plan so in subsequent years things turn to ****.

All CEO's like to think they drive profit but there are plenty that make mistakes and cost the company millions.

A great example is the former CEO of Fletchers in NZ, he put together a whole list of forward work with fixed cost pricing. Those decisions are costing Fletchers hundreds of millions of dollars a year long after he's been sent down the road but hey, I'm sure he looked good when he had a order book full of huge contracts back in the day.

CEO's along with the board set policy and guidance but it is the managers below who have to come up with the plans to turn those idea's into actual process to create that profit. It's nice to sit at the top and decide you are going to make X amount of sales a month and produce Y amount of product but if you read the market wrong than no matter how much **** you make you simply won't sell it.

And then.... Once again this lefty crap, you are a short sighted idiot who always falls back on this one pathetic argument when all your other arguments fail. You need to stop insulting people if you ever want people to take you seriously.



My better half works in the building industry with very good insight into what is happening at a national level and also international.

fixed it for ya.

Snap !

Mine too.

It is the only industry she has worked in.

The problem we see here in the construction industry (and I'm sure it is true for others as well) is that (lets work on the example of a builder but it could be a drain layer or plumber or any other trade for that matter) is that a builder decides to go out on his own after working for someone else for years (and no doubt good at their job) but said builder has little to no financial backing or capital (when I studied accounting and economics you set up a business plan, found capital or investors to back that plan before actually starting out).

So said builder has won a contract to build a house, they go hand out to suppliers looking for credit to purchase supplies to build said house. Now this is all well and proper but on the 20th after first month said supply companies are going to want payment on good supplied to said builder but because the house isn't complete yet and the deposit (or progress payments) aren't enough the builder is struggling to make payment and it becomes a juggling act between getting paid and paying suppliers. So said builder is walking a tight rope along the line of insolvency and missing a payment to a major supplier can quickly tip said builder/company into receivership.

This is a problem I see occur on a regular basis and it's happening during the boom part of the cycle and it only gets worse during the bust part of the cycle.

In NZ it is really hard been a small time business owner working for yourself unless you have plenty of business nous and capital which is something many small businesses seems to lack unfortunately and then there are the bad actors, the ones who think they know what they are doing and continuously run companies into the ground and then phoenix into the next one. We see way to many of those and NZ law allows them to get away with it.

I have no idea about NZ but in Aus the stage payments are fairly cash positive to the builder for most of the build. By far the biggest outgoing cash drain is in the final stage which is way more than the typical 10% final payment. This applies for most volume builds. Quite often for the custom luxo builds there are either more stages or monthly payments that are usually ratified by a QA.

We have the NZ Master builder association and they provide cover to their licensed builders but try claiming on one of those policies is like getting blood out of a stone. There really is little protection for the buyer if the builder goes bust/insolvent.

The home owner warranty insurance in Vic is ok (just) if the builder goes under but the time delays are quite often massive as is the stress to the poor home owner.

This is a good example of a major construction company collapse and has been ongoing for years in the courts,

Mainzeal directors lose appeal, ordered to pay nearly $40m in damages

The Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of the four directors of the collapsed construction firm Mainzeal, with $39.8m in damages, plus interest, awarded against them for breaching the Companies Act.

www.rnz.co.nz

It's a rare case where the board is been held to account for their bad management. Glad to see the former PM been held to account!

From what I heard from those in the construction industry was not greed and stupidity it was actually under quoting. The issue was crazy high demand for new houses and 1000s of approvals. This caused a massive material shortage and thus prices of some materials more than doubled in a very short period. Because many builders could no longer honour the quote many had to fold, which was their only out. Supply and demand was the issue and not building Co's as such.

Typically a builder will allow around 3% for material/labour price rises across the board in their budget. But yeah during covid 50% in a year was not uncommon and some items doubled and tripled whilst others just not available at any price. There are many great builders that went broke thru no fault of their own what so ever. Of course there is also no end of terrible builders that have been flushed out which is a good thing.

Anybody that says it is greed and stupidity are (being polite) uninformed to the extreme.

Ps - I am a licensed builder in Victoria & QLD. and have been in the industry for longer than I care to remember.

 

[JRNZER]

But you have been conditioned to this Australian attitude.

You do realise that in other countries smoking is the norm.
Hell even in NZ they still smoke in eating areas, last time I was there I was at a pub in Tairua, I was smoking back then, quit now.
But I walked over to the outside of the outdoor area to smoke, people were looking at me strange.
Then I started eating and people sparked up, my uncle said it's normal over there.
This is how far different Australia is.

My mate is Croat, he told me one time he was over there having a family lunch his Cousin was smoking, he asked him if he could stop.
His cousin said something along the lines of "when you're in this country cousin you follow our ruels"
This was inside and my mate is a smoker and he has smoked with his cousin before.

How many years ago was that?
Smoking in pubs, clubs and eating establishments in NZ has been banned since the late 90s I believe. Could be since early 2000s.

There would be some places that ignore the law, But there is still a law against it

 

[Immortality]

How many years ago was that?
Smoking in pubs, clubs and eating establishments in NZ has been banned since the late 90s I believe. Could be since early 2000s.

There would be some places that ignore the law, But there is still a law against it

Yup. No smoking here.

For a while there were smoking area's outside at pubs etc but definitely no smoking inside but that is all long gone.

I know at my old work there was a designated smoking area set aside for those who like to suck on cancer sticks but there are a lot of businesses that don't and you'll see people standing outside the gate smoking.

Up until about 6 weeks ago we had the most aggressive anti-smoking laws in the world but the new National government sold out to big tobacco and made a raft of changes, non that were campaigned on and so had no mandate to make those changes. But that is what you expect from a political party that has sold it's soul to big business/tobacco.

 

[Sabbath']

Quoting more just to add to this as we've spoken extensively about this.

But yeah during covid 50% in a year was not uncommon and some items doubled and tripled whilst others just not available at any price. There are many great builders that went broke thru no fault of their own what so ever.

We also had an incredibly wet 2022/23 in Victoria alongside coming out of COVID which would have increased costs at the bottom end of the build (site cuts and related works).

We were seeing costs go from $10-15/m3 to tip clean fill as a pretty constant rate over the past 5 or so years to $40-$50/m3 and that was if you could find a tip site that was open (more time on the road equals less loads and more truck hire).

All additional costs nobody would have foreseen and if you extrapolate that cost over a number of sites and hundreds of thousands of metres it all adds up.