Sold out our electronics industry? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 11:55:10 am
content: Our politicians just signed us up to a free trade agreement with red China. Our politicians are gloating on what a good deal this is. But I see it as a sell out for those in technology.In turn, China will remove all export tariffs on electronics and vehicles shipped to Australia. This does nothing to improve the "knowledge nation", who already cannot compete on the cheap labour and poor working conditions in China. It does nothing to make our high tech more cost competitive.I think electronics is far too cheap. I suggest there should be at least a 100% import duty on all finished electronics product to protect our industry and skills, and to make money from taxation. Discrete components and electronics assembly and test equipment should be exempt. I would be happy to pay double for toys like iPad, mobile phones and LCD TVs if our electronics industry can return to its glory days of just a few decades ago. Our government is out-sourcing programming jobs to India through front companies. Sure we are a wealthy country, but try telling that to the thousands of IT or electronics professionals who cannot get a job.Am I alone in being concerned about the future of electronics industry? It appears our ex-lawyer politicians don't give a rats arse about the electronics industry or the importance of intellectual property. Maybe it is because there are so few of us left, we don't even show up on the electoral radar. Do other western countries suffer from Luddite politicians, or are they far more astute to the importance of technology?http://www.afr.com/p/special_reports/opportunityasia/finance_tourism_health_win_china_FEMCppyjGbplI6XWMtQITO

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:06:55 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on November 18, 2014, 11:55:10 amStupid question, are the majority of Australians there agree with you ?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:12:08 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on November 18, 2014, 11:55:10 amHaving just visited Ness's world class design and production facility today, I came away pretty upbeat.Andthey sell into and are pretty much #1 in Asia.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:19:05 pm
content: Just an aside, how can the politicians count "dropping" export tariffs on finished products a win? (I don't believe they existed in the first place.) Access to finished foreign luxury products is nice for the standard of living, but neutral or negative for the economy.China dropping export tariffs on rare earth metals for instance would be a win, or import tariffs. This looks more like capitulation/corruption, I bet there are some nice jobs waiting for some government employees at companies which will benefit from this.

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:19:45 pm
content: I honestly wish that I could say something profoundly uplifting but I am speechless, and these idiots would do well by doing the same.They should keep their ridiculous mouths shut and their pens in their armani suit pockets, they have no idea what the hell is going on or what companies are closing up around here.Muttley

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:27:27 pm
content: QuoteYou are more fit to live in the 1950s, dude.

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:29:16 pm
content: Sorry Dave, but I do have to get this out,NESS Security products are and alway's have been mediocre at best, you want to look at professional Australian systems then Inner Range, Digiflex/ Bosch & GE Tecom.PS: We install and service all brands out there. 25 years +Sorry for the rain.Muttley

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 12:59:28 pm
content: Quote from: Muttley Snickers on November 18, 2014, 12:29:16 pmHow so?Not that it is relevant to what is being discussed here, because they are undeniably a hugely successful Australian company with a pretty darn good reputation in a whole range of industries, not just security. And they manufacture everything here and export a heck of a lot of stuff as well.Also the winner of 7 Australian Design Awards.QuoteHow may of those are 100% Australian manufactured? And I'm talking everything, panels, sensors, wireless, etc etc. Ness do it all in-house, everything in the entire system.Bosch closed their manufacturing here some time back.Inner Range aren't even close to Ness in scale. As an example, Ness have manufactured and sold more of just one wireless panel, than all of Inner Range's systems combined.http://nesscorporation.com/ness-security/ness-control-panels/business-security/106-285.html

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:11:05 pm
content: I agree that it's probably not the place,NESS is owned by Westinghouse, Digiflex Australia, previously known as EDM now provides all models to Bosch. Inner Range is Australian, and there are others.Muttley

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:13:18 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on November 18, 2014, 12:12:08 pmBy what measure are they #1 in Asia? I thought they were just a security company. The big security equipment makers are in China these days. Hikvision are the world's biggest video surveillance company. Gulf and others are huge in intruder detection, fire detection, and the other little gadgets of the security industry. In fact, when developing silicon for these markets pretty much the only customers you need to survey for requirements are in China.

author: LordNobady
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:16:48 pm
content: If it will make electronics cheaper most people will be happy with it. Only when thy are fired becose of it thy will see that everything has a prize.only some smart people can look outside the box Enoch to see that other people are negatively affected by things like this. And smart people don't wast there time in politics.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:20:44 pm
content: Quote from: Muttley Snickers on November 18, 2014, 01:11:05 pmNo, Ness is privately owned after a management buy-back. I just spent several hour talking to the CEO today who told me the entire story.QuoteYep, a good friend of mine is a former designer at EDM, I'll check with him again, but I'm pretty sure they shut up shop, and panels are now manufactured overseas. And that is also what the CEO of Ness told me today as well.QuoteInner range might be an Australian company, but that's not the point, do they actually manufacture here?And if so, what do they manufacture?Sure there are others like MCM Electronics out at Penrith that I visited a long time ago also, but I'm not sure if they make everything local. They didn't when I visited them. They certainly don't make their own sensors.The point I'm trying to make here is that Ness are a huge full-scope local manufacturer, and they design and manufacture everything in-house. They even manufacture panels for overseas security companies.Can you name another Australian manufacturer that actually makes their own stuff here?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:21:50 pm
content: Try reading something about the history of protectionism before suggesting it. If the rest of us are lucky a country getting protectionist just wrecks its own economy. If we are unlucky, tit for tat actions start, and the whole world's economy suffers.If you raise the price of electronics people just buy a lot less. There's only so much cash available for buying the stuff. When electronics was expensive it was a small industry. Every time it gets cheaper it grows. If you want a small electronics industry just artificially raise prices.Australia never had a large electronics industry. It had a small industry that looked significant when the rest of the world also had a small electronics industry. Australia's was unable to grow. Australia does, however, have other industries which are huge, like minerals and farming. Would you like to see how much protectionism over a small electronics industry can shrink those large ones?Try looking up Luddite, too. The Luddites were protectionists, not people breaking down barriers.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:24:31 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2014, 01:13:18 pmWell, I don't think it's actually all of Asia, but there are coupe of asian countries where many of their panels are #1 sellers I was told.

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 01:41:08 pm
content: China is Australia's biggest export market (NZ's too), it makes sense to get free trade with China, to remove trade barriers and tariffs, in order to continue to grow your exports into that market.That (you think) one industry is going to suffer as a result, may or may not be true, there are always winners and losers in life, change or die.If you can not compete on price, then do it on quality, or features, or support, or ....As for your McCarthyesque slur, I defy you to go walk around in any large mainland china city and think for a moment that "this is dirty dirty communism". They might not be "democratic" still, but you can not deny that capitalism and growing "westernisation" among younger generations is present with abundance in China. Times they are a changing.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 02:33:06 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on November 18, 2014, 11:55:10 amA guy wants others to subsidize his industry. That's a first.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 03:53:27 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on November 18, 2014, 11:55:10 amWhen the steam train got invented makers of carriages for use with a horse made the same complaint. You can only stay on top if you innovate. There is enough room to compete with Chinese when it comes to innovation and skill. Import taxes just harm your own economy in the long run because the rest of the world has access to cheaper products & tools. OTOH governments should enforce safety regulations strictly on imported products.

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 04:07:07 pm
content: This forum has some members from Brazil. If they are old enough maybe one or two could tell us how their electronics tariffs instituted from at least the 1980's worked out in protecting their small computer industry. In my recollection it never worked, except to breed some very inefficient local companies who sold to the government. Private people bought on the black market at fractions of the official cost. The problem of lost manufacturing is real though, I just don't think protectionism is the cure. Australia (and Canada) have the additional problem that our dollar(s) have values largely determined by raw commodity prices, the "dutch" disease.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 05:03:15 pm
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on November 18, 2014, 04:07:07 pmAs I understand it the tax is about 100% on imports, at least that's what I was charged about three months ago by Fedex when a buyer of one of my products refused to pay the import duty. I then had the privilege of (a) paying his import duty, (b) paying for the unit to be returned and (c) paying UK customs for the returned item. I had no choice in any of those three options, despite the recipient being responsible for local taxes. I did tell Fedex to destroy them item, to avoid having to pay the tax, but they'd already paid it and went after me for payment.So, I was significantly out of pocket for supplying the item.I no longer use Fedex for shipments to Brazil as a result, they have to suffer the postal service.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 05:07:56 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on November 18, 2014, 05:03:15 pmI was told that for some telecoms products the Brazilian import duty is 600%. Sounds wacky, but it sure keeps out the imports.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 05:32:10 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2014, 05:07:56 pmThat's oppression.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 06:15:38 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2014, 05:07:56 pmI would not be at all surprised.I haven't been to Brazil for some years, but it seemed to me that if you needed something doing, greasing palms was the generally accepted modus operandi.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2014, 10:08:23 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on November 18, 2014, 01:21:50 pmWrong!The IBM plant in Australia in the 80's and 90's made all the PC's and RISC RS6000's for the entire SE Asia region - millions of them. And manufactured the Apple Power Mac processor as one of three plants world wide - Vimercate, Charlotte and Wangaratta. Not to mention a million or so Japanese network display terminals. And a host of OEM stuff. Wangaratta also back filled US and EU demand. That plant was world class.And then there was Ericsson and Alcatel and a host of other big players in manufacturing and R & D.ALL GONE.Bosch in Melbourne has seriously downsized, but it still makes huge volumes of zener diodes for global consumption by Bosch alternators. Possibly the only semiconductor plant left in Australia. Its days are numbered.

author: johnh
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2014, 12:44:32 am
content: The only reason Alcatel, Ericsson and Nortel had manufacturing plant in Australia. Was that Telecom Australia had specified that a percentage of the equipment had to be produced locally.I have seen the plant Alcatel S12 plant in Liverpool in Sydney, back in the 90's. They only produced some of the most common cards (Line Cards) locally. The rest came from other plants in Belgium, China and Germany if I recall correctly. They had a phone (Telstra Touchphone) production line in another building. But, it was shut down or being shutdown.Ericsson had a production facility in Broadmeadows in Melbourne were that made ARF Crossbar (relay logic) 1960's, ARE11 1970's and later AXE 1980's (Computerized digital exchanges). But, all that stopped when Telstra stopped buying bulk amount of equipment after they had modernized the network from analog exchanges to digital , in the late 90's.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2014, 03:32:52 am
content: Quote from: johnh on November 19, 2014, 12:44:32 amWhen most telcos were state owned the world was littered with factories that only existed to comply with demands for minimum local content. When the telcos were sold off this largely stopped, and manufacturing centralised in the most efficient places. Many of these factories were built when more than enough capacity already existed in the vendor's organisation. Of course, the additional cost of the unnecessary plants was passed on to the customers. The vendors didn't care much one way or the other. Any vendor who won a bid had to deal with the same overhead, so it wasn't really a competitive issue. It must have been so satisfying to know you have a solid career in tender document compliance.

author: johnh
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2014, 06:16:36 am
content: The Funny thing Telecom Australia was that they were buying Ericsson AXE equipment manufactured by STC as a second supplier, later to become Alcatel-STC and then Alcatel. That all stopped when Telecom Australia decided to introduce a 2nd switch type, S12 from Alcatel. Originally designed by ITT and manufactured by BTM ( Bell Telephone Manufacturing) and other subsidiaries

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2014, 12:51:04 pm
content: The Alcatel plant in Sydney was largely old pin-though hole technology until the short-lived Bluegum Technologies bought it and attempted to introduce SMD lines. For reasons I won't mention here, it all went seriously pear shaped. I have been to the Alcatel plant a number of times and one thing that really impressed me was the noisy karate robot that folded the cardboard boxes for those Telstra phones.Anyone who saw that machine will remember it.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2014, 01:12:03 pm
content: Quote from: johnh on November 19, 2014, 12:44:32 amYes, Ericsson was a big employer here. And they hosted the AEDC as well where some excellent electronics seminars and courses were held. I did a course there years ago and after I drove out, I took a wrong turn into the back streets of Broadmeadows. I guess the sight of a young bloke in a suit driving a new car annoyed a gang of local Broady Boys or Thomastown Sharps, so they took to throwing stones at the car as I drove past. Ericsson is now in docklands... a much nicer and safer abode.