A rant by Gary J Matthews.
About 35 short years ago everyone had Jobs everywhere, in fact Mums use to stay home and families all lived happily just on Dad’s wages.
We had Iron Ore and great steel industries. We had shipbuilding, car manufacturing, Holden, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Ford, even Lightburn made a Zeta. We built TV’s, radio’s, washing machines, Victa lawnmowers, Hills hoists & fine furniture manufacturing. We built car parts and we even made our own tyres at Bridgestone! We had fishing ports all over Australia from Port Lincoln to Brunswick Heads. We made our own cheap petrol that was refined at Stanvac Oil refinery in S.A. and Bulimba Refinery in Brisbane. Mortlake Sydney Refinery’s from oil brought in from the Bass Strait, North West Shelf, and the Timor Sea.
We built aircraft, boats, submarines and battlecruisers, ships, warships, buses, locomotives, diesel-electric trains, as well as the tracks. You can add hundreds more to that list. And everything was ‘Proudly made in Australia’. We had corner stores and milk bars and deli’s, and hardware shops all over the city and country. Our rural towns were a hive of activity. They were very strong communities and were linked by a vast rail network that now lies dormant all across the country. Flea markets were everywhere at the weekends. All our food was fresh and local. Our milk and bread were delivered every morning fresh to our doorstep in recyclable glass bottles.
We paid our rates to the local council to maintain our streets and remove our rubbish. We use to dump our extra rubbish free at the local tips.
We had work available as driveway attendants at all our local service stations. That was when we had Australian-owned service stations like Golden Fleece that even had restaurants owned by H.C. Sleigh… and Ampol. I even remember good-old Stanley who checked our tyres, checked our oils, and washed the windscreen. At all these places you could find a job!
I remember going to Myers, David Jones, and Waltons etc. to buy clothes. There was always someone with a tape measure to measure me up and all my new clothes fitted perfectly. Today, I have to take clothes off the shelves, get them out of the packets, take them to the fitting room and try them on. If they don’t fit, put them back and keep trying till I get some that do fit. Two Hours later, I take them to the checkout, that is if it is not a self-serve checkout. They are scanned and the operator tells me the price… “Oh!”, I say… “Can you tell me, the second-hand price, please????” “These are new.” she replies… “No, they are not! These shirts smell under the armpits… These are not new at all… How many people before me have tried them on??? I don’t know what diseases people have. This is a public health issue.”
We had public utilities, like power stations, water & gas which would employ thousand around the country and it was always so cheap. It would sustain thousands of industries all over the nation. This was how thousands of jobs were created.
We were all taught ‘respect for others and ourselves’ at school. Then the bloody government starting selling out our very souls !!!! It started to corporatise itself and began to compete against private enterprise instead of govern. Local councils started to buy up caravan & tourist parks in all the major tourist spots and build shopping hubs and rented them out. At the same time, it dictated to others what they could and could not do. We started going downhill.
All our companies and manufacturers started going offshore or close down because this new corporate government did deals with other countries under free trade agreements that allowed them to totally wipe out our business and manufacturing by allowing the foreign business to start flooding our once great nation with their cheap crap.
We as Australians used to watch each other’s backs. We respected each other. We said “G’day” with a smile. We were happy with our freedom and our wonderful democracy. Children could safely go anywhere as long as they were home before dark. Now we watch each other through security screens and burglar alarms and live in constant fear and stress.
Foreign countries were allowed to march in and start taking over, rape, and pillage our resources. They started driving our farmers off their lands and then sold it to these foreign countries. They cut back funding to our education system and slowed down teaching trade skills to our youth. They set up 457 visa’s to replace our trade workers with poor quality cheap workers from overseas. These things left our once beautiful country in tatters!
Politicians allowed foreign countries to buy our power stations and guaranteed them that they would always make a profit at our expense no matter what.
Now because we have lost so much, the government then realised that they don’t get much income anymore and have to find new ways to make money. This hits it’s own people further in the pocket. They invented things like GST, Excise Taxes, Levies by the hundreds on everything. They cut funding to our emergency services and forced us to all pay an ’emergency services levy’. They cut funding to our police and public housing.
All our public owned forestries were sold off to foreign ownership. These new corporate government politicians laughed in our faces and gave themselves pay rises. They pat themselves on the back knowing that we are so dumb that we would not know what is going on!
Now they tell us we have to tighten our belts. We lose what little we have left whilst paying back the massive debt they created. Yet they gifted other countries billions in foreign aid setting up their countries at the peril of our own.
Everywhere I shop today, just about everything is ‘Made in China’. It dawned on me that every time I buy something ‘Made in China’, I am actually funding China to buy my own country from under my feet. We are giving China so much profit that they can now afford to buy us out. This is what they are doing and our Government is helping them do so.
Today, I drive the main roads around Adelaide and all I see is the empty buildings that once housed all these great manufacturing companies. When I drive past the Holden Plant at Elizabeth, now totally empty, I begin to cry for what has happened to my once-great nation.
This overpaid government need more taxes to live on so they are now going to force our elderly (God bless them, for they were the ones that helped build this Nation in the first place) back into the workforce until they are 70. I tell everyone to “Go out and get a JOB!!” This is not just South Australia, this has happened all over Australia.
Can someone in this new Corporate Government tell us EXACTLY WHERE THE BLOODY JOBS ARE???????????????????????
ALL YOU HAD TO WAS SELL THE MILK, NOT THE WHOLE COW!
TODAY, EVERY SINGLE THING LISTED ABOVE IS NOW GONE, GONE, GONE AND JUST LEFT TO DECAY!!!!
MY HOW THIS ONCE MIGHTY 100% SELF SUFFICIENT NATION HAS FALLEN.
And while you’s sit there reading all this thinking this was another facebook rant about the government running us down the drain, it was fact.
Written by Gary J Matthews. (Edited for clarity by Andy)
