The wool industry cannot get stronger with the closure of the wool combing unit as claimed. If labour is not economical for wool combing plant in Australia then labour cannot be economical for the wool grower of Australia. How come AWI is not winding up. AWTA can continue to test and study the minute micro charasteristics of wool since they have the monopoly in wool testing.

Value addition in wool means higher technologies upto weaving and apparel production. If that is not viable economically then how come the wool grower will find things viable. Agreed .... now the wool is fetching a better price... How long?

The ultimate indictment on a succession of gutless Political parties run by the Bureauracy.

Add to this the recent "findings" by the Australia Institute about our poor employees who are overworked, and you have to ask yourself some serious questions about the direction of employment in Australia. Is the ultimate goal of Australian employees to be Aussie layabouts with a tan?

Put the entire plant on a barge, anchor it just outside the 12 mile territorial boundary, and employ as many cheap foreign workers as is necessary to keep the operation viable.

Once again our ever present "guardians" of Australian jobs will just sit on their hands while an entire local value adding facility closes down. It may only require replacing 20% of the local staff with cheaper guest workers to lower the average wages bill to a point where the . But our neanderthal union movement cvannot get it's tiny brain around any other option but their dumb, binary, "all or nothing" mindset.

Partial job substitution works brilliantly in Singapore and many other countries but our own union movement is too stupid to even immitate something that works.

How so, JN? If you can't compete, you go out of business. Simple. What has government got to do with it? Are you suggesting we should abandon our free-floating currency, and return to the really bad old days of political interference, at the whim of whatever lobby group currently has the most clout?

And Suzie, what on earth are you on about? We have possibly the lowest unemployment rate in the western world, to the point where we now actually have critical shortages of skilled labour in some industries. How can you say we are heading for a nation full of layabouts with tans?

Sad day indeed for the wool processing industry in Australia. I had a lot of involvement with this plant after Roger and his staff came to see me for advise about how to build a combing plant in the early nineties. Its actually lasted longer than I expected thought it would have been in China long before now.I saw an advert in a magazine that the Australian Mint was offering coins for sale with the slogan Australia Rides On the Sheeps Back. Thought the advert was 25 years old, but no it was yesterday. The marketing boys at the Mint must be living in the past or have been asleep for years like Rip Van Winkle. After all the bad news about Manufacturing in Australia, I'm glad I've retired although after 50 years processing wool I still miss it. Strange that I got the email from the Land thought I been scrubbed for refusing to pay for the news. Cant be all bad news.

I understand that there are now only two commercial knitting mills in Australia.

An Australian invention, machine washable wool, is now only available from China.

So, once again, an Australian invention, paid for by Australian wool growers, is in the hands of others.

For all of my working life the value of Australian wool, we have been told, has been tied to the exchange rate. As a result the flock has declined.

Now, as the Australian dollar is at or above parity with the US dollar, the price being paid for Australian merino wool continues to rise.

Supply and demand? Maybe. Or perhaps others know more about the 'real' value of a 'finished product' made from wool, than we do.

So now we are back where we were at the beginning. We keep sheep, we shear them and we let others get on with the job of making 'real' money out of it.

Why has it always been too expensive to value add in Australia?

Just to complete the sentence above that was gobbled by gremlins. " It may only require replacing 20% of the local staff with cheaper guest workers to lower the average wages bill to a point where the .. plant remains viable.

Is there any better example of the way labour market rigidities cost jobs? Do the numbers. 50 local staff on $40,000 each is a $2 million wages bill and a plant barely making a profit. But 40 local staff on $40,000 each plus 10 guest workers on $10,000 each lowers the total wages bill to $1.7 million and produces a $300,000 profit, from which $100,000 is paid in tax.

But no, our champions of workers welfare will watch the whole show go overseas and instead of half a $million in tax collected from local wages they will pay half a $million in dole instead. Go figure,

so bushie bill, you don't subscribe to government interference. lets get politicians out of the murray darling basin, the red gum forests, oh yeah how about we scrap the hybrid camry's.

Yes Bushie , critical shortages of labour in "some" industries, most of those being directly related to mining and mining services. there are seasonal shortages in agricultural industries as well but the problem is related to margins and risk for those that do the risk taking. Our desire to protect workers "rights" is most definitely part of the reason down stream processing of food and fibre production is going off shore.

We're getting sustainability and green house emissions issues rammed down our throats as well whilst this stuff goes on, you seem fairly knowledgeable on many issues BB, perhaps you could do the food mile calculations and a short study on the long term sustainability of our penchant for exporting our industries?