John Linton It seems, from the 'facts', that irrespective of what statements are made to the contrary that there are harder times ahead than we have seen in Australia for a very long time. Perhaps that isn't the case but everywhere I look all I see are negatives - and not just in the communications industry but everywhere I take the trouble to notice what is going on. The EU media appears to be more financially responsible than its counterpart in Australia and, ignoring the current PIIGS problems (so widely reported on in so many contradictory ways) both the UK and France continually report massive societal changing negative issues that are truly appalling in their magnitude. Of course what happens to the Europeans is not going to affect Australia in the same ways but subtract the income from exporting the base substance of the actual continent and what difference is there between the EU at this time and Australia? Only the desire and ability of the Chinese to pay for building materials?
I don't know how much sympathy you have for the striking Qantas engineers at the moment or the Wollongong steel workers who are losing their jobs or the NSW public servants who keep threatening to strike over redundancy and pay conditions....perhaps total or perhaps somewhere in between total and zero. Whatever you feel about whatever you see happening in those various situations perhaps you have noticed that there appear to be more of that sort of reporting at this time than you can remember for quite a while? While we were in England very recently we noticed many signs of financial problems from the number of mortgagee sales in the pretty villages to the number of homeless people on the London streets - and of course the media reports. Articles like this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8821626/Unemployment-rockets-past-2.5m-to-reach-17-year-high.html
were a daily occurrences and reported very significant societal changes - not just blips in the ever running good times. What does happen if a whole generation doesn't get any work? What does happen if a pension dependent generation doesn't get paid because their country's government simply can't borrow the money to make the promised payments? It could never happen. But after decades of profligacy it is a very real possibility in more than one EU country and the effects of such a thing happening will certainly make radical impacts on Australia...though of course that is all in the long distant future. Unless you're a Qantas engineer, a Wollongong steel worker a......
It's way above my head to attempt to understand any aspect of Australia's, let alone any other country's, economy but as a realistically responsible person I have a responsibility to get some sort of idea about the direction of the economy and therefore the sorts of actions that our irrelevant (to everyone but us) company should take. From what 'facts' are being published, every indication is that more people are losing their jobs than in the past few years and more people are concerned from what they see within their immediate work places that their jobs are not as secure as they once were. I see an increasing amount of 'job attrition' within Exetel's suppliers and also within some of Exetel's customers and therefore I have little reason to believe that it is not more widespread than my immediate 'vision'.
I am not yet concerned about any aspect of our business yet - but I think that having concern is not far in to the future.
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