Local job malaise !

The announcement that the Illawarra Coke company will close it's Coalcliff plant in 2013 with the loss of fifteen jobs will send a chill through the hearts of the unemployed in this region.   Every commuter using rail to and from Sydney would be familiar with the battery of coke ovens at Coalcliff and to see this go just one year short of a century of operations illustrates the death march that is consuming Australian industry.

Illawarra Coke company is facing hard times because of the GFC and it's affect on European manufacturing, combined with the downturn in the Australian steel industry, a world over supply of coke, the strong Australian dollar - and of course - the carbon tax.

What must concern Wollongong residents is the fact that once this plant closes and those fifteen workers join the dole queue, these jobs will be lost forever.  There is little chance of a reopening when better times return.
Once a plant closes any hope of a return disappears under the weight of the restrictions that apply in compiling an application for a new operating license - and this involves costly investigations of plant and fauna presence, a pollution survey on output and water resources, traffic effects,  zoning compatibility, effect on any Aboriginal past use of the area - and most probably a concerted series of court actions by nay sayers who seem determined to stop all and any commercial activity on the escarpment.

We seem to face a strange conundrum that is new to this day and age. Where once people expected to live and work within their community, it seems that we reject local work sources as too noisy or too polluting to share our cities.   It is doubtful that if there was a proposal to site the Port Kembla steel mill at it's present site, it would have a hope of gaining approval today.    We would demand that it be located on a new site, far removed from the city.

If or when the day arrives that the world needs more coke, it is likely that any new coke oven operation will be located a long way from Wollongong, probably in proximity to one of the new distant coal mines.  As a result, jobs will not be available to Wollongong workers, or if they are - they will be on a fly in, fly out basis.

The first rule of commerce is that to pay for imports you need an almost equal export stream.  We seem to be degenerating into an exporter of minerals, wheat and wool - and little else !   That marvellous world of " services " has gone offshore to low wage countries and now we are told that our education facilities are not up to scratch.   Australian children are not reaching the heights of Asian children and it seems unlikely that we will emulate Germany - where a skilled, high wage work force is dominating machine exports from the entire Euro block.

We need to pour more treasure into expanding our education and work skills, and we need to be less squeamish about a mix of industry and housing to make sure that jobs are where workers can access them.  Otherwise, our cities will become more like Canberra - a place that produces absolutely nothing tangible - but employees a lot of people tapping keyboards.

Unless we address this slide into oblivion, a decade or so from now Australia may be regarded as " the poor white trash of Asia " !