This excellent letter will resonate with many Australians. Sad!

Oh for the good 'ol days. The following was posted on Facebook.

Quote About 35 short years ago everyone had Jobs everywhere, in fact Mums use to stay home and families all lived happily just on Dads 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 SA, 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, and 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 f activity as they were very strong Communities and were linked by a vast rail network that now lies dormant forever all across the country.
Flea Markets everywhere on 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. and 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 your tyres, checked your oils and washes your windscreen. And at ALL these places you could always find a JOB!!!

I remember going to Myers, David Jones and Waltons etc to buy Clothes and 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 you get some that do fit. 2 Hours later take them to the checkout that 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 and at the same time dictate to all others what you can and can not do...
Then 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 use to all watch each other's backs and respect each other and all say G'day with a smile because we were all happy with our freedom and our wonderful democracy. Children could safely go anywhere as long as they were home before dark. Now we just watch each other through security screens and burglar alarms and live in constant FEAR & STRESS.

These Foreign Countries were allowed to just march in and start taking over and rape and pillage all 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 and 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 they don't get much income anymore and have to find new ways to make money so it hits it’s own people further in the pocket. They invented things like GST, Excise Taxes, Levy's buy 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.

continued

It's a crying shame what has happened to this country.

When the Liberal (conservative) Governments realised they could sell everything, even if it was nailed down like utilities and allow work to be offshored because "leave it to the free market" in an attempt to balance their budgets, deliver a surplus and claim they are the better economic managers our fate was sealed.

It's going to take a lot to turn things around and sadly those locally who think like Rich put the task to the side of politics who created the problem in the first place claiming they're the only ones who can fix it.

Political tribalism before brains as usual.  It's how Trump was elected, it's how Morrison retained office and until we can get some truth in politics and removed the hands of Murdoch from around our collective throats, nothing will change.

Damn liberals.

Oh, dearie, dearie, me.  Lightburn made the Zeta over 60 years ago.  We still have a fishing port in Port Lincoln.  We still make fine furniture.  What has happened is that Australia has caught up with the rest of the world or rather the world has put Australia in it's place.  We still dig iron ore from the ground, we still farm wheat and sheep and cattle.  Australia has simply recognised it is cheaper to have things made in China and India than in Australia.   Australia has opened it's markets to the world and the world has responded.  Is this a bad thing?  No, I don't think so.  My kids work in IT and Nursing, rather than in a factory or on a farm.  Australia and the world has changed and so it should have.  We are not frozen in aspic, despite what the natonalists and Tories might desire.  Tsk, tsk.   

Well I lived in Australia 35 years ago and that is not how I remember it. It was pretty sh!t actually compared to now.  Standard of living in general was much lower back then.

China had a lot or poor people so the socialist world elite and the UN decided to do something about it. Build factories to make and sell cheap goods. That would make the poor people a bit better off, a bit of money to buy a TV set and a 125cc motorbike or pushbike

Everything that happened to Australia, was to ultimately help poor people in China, Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia, etc

It was planned for Australia to become a service nation, a great leap forward - err backward, I should say

Richdude wrote on Oct 26^th, 2020 at 12:24am:


Well, anywhere except Glenelg Beach.

rhino wrote on Oct 26^th, 2020 at 2:37pm:


No issue except it's caused a woman per week to be killed. More drug deaths than road fatalities. Countless cars crashing into lounge rooms and shops. Muslims stabbing people in the streets. Millions lost in scams. Rough treatment of the elderly in age care homes. Police brutality. Childcare scams. Money extorted from Centerlink. Pedophile priests. Sexual molestation. Child abuse. Neglect of bushfire prevention. Third rate doctors in rural public hospitals. School bullying causing suicides. PTSD of veterans ignored. Tollway rip-offs. Banks fraudulently charging fees. Immigrant home invasions and bashings. Hit and runs. Tradie rip-offs of the elderly. Repeat crime by paroled prisoners. $30mill for a $3mill block of land. Aust Post Cartier watches. Premier's secret love affair with a scoundrel

That's your huge leap forward