utilisation rate

I just read that the Australian is complaining that Migrants are under-utilized in Australia.

Taxi driver Jagdeep Singh, with a BSc and MA from Punjab University, outside his home in Algester, Brisbane, yesterday.

Well bully for him ... there is far less discussion on how many native born Australians are in the same situation.

I can speak from personal experience that I am not working in the area I spent years of hard work training to be in.

Personally I'm very happy to have a job and income.

Perhaps the real issue is to understand why we have so many migrants here (presumably encouraged here under skilled migration under John Howard) while at the same time having housing shortages due to high population growth (fueled by migration) and under-employment of Skilled Australians.

as the old slogan used to say "Wake Up Australia"

Aussie culture - what is it?

We often too and fro about this issue, what is Australian culture. While its hard to put down in a bullet point list I would say the beach and the surf would be part of it.

This weekend gone a member of a group of 4 died here on the coast going swimming in the evening. I also heard on the radio that increasingly children are not learning to swim. This is a tragedy, especially so when you consider how easy it is to teach kids to swim.

The latest figures (according to a report by the Royal Life Saving) is that 56% of drownings were children.

One of my earliest memories in my life was learning to swim, which we did at Kindy. Naturally (living in Southport) my family got into Nippers.

Nippers are a great way to get kids into fun safety and sporting events all at the same time.


The above scene is a typical nippers day morning on the beach, with a beach race about to start.

Beaches, family, kids and fun ... surely this is part of Australian culture.

It seems unreal to me that people who would be drawn to the beach would not have the basics of safety such as being able to swim even 50 meters.

Australia has had a vast influx of migrants from locations of the world who do not have a beach culture. It is no surprise that these people are not engaging in things in the same way. Perhaps have come from an urbanized area or a place with no swimming.

But what ever your past has been if you like the beach, and you value your kids ... please teach them to swim.

why the US Dollar

Anyone with a passing interest in finance (seems to be more people today) will notice (perhaps) that we always use the US Dollar in comparisons.

It would seem to be the basis of all comparisons. There is some historical reason for this, but in a nustshell it essentially boils down to the USA being the last big boy standing after the all out brawls of WW1 and WW2 were over.

The USA could step in and say we hold the cards. Its a simplification but more or less supported by a number of views. Have a quick look at the history of the Bretton Woods Agreement at Wikipedia here, but a quick potted history from wikipedia is:

Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated upon and signed the Bretton Woods Agreements during the first three weeks of July 1944.

Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, the planners at Bretton Woods established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement.

Well anyway ... it was all going well for them till the USA itself (embroiled in a costly campaign in Vietnam) pulled out the main pin with the Nixon Shock of removing Gold from being the governing commodity for the US currency.

So apart from habits (and they really do die hard) there is really little to tie us to use the USD as a currency comparator.

Back when I first went to the USA the price of the US dollar was actually less than the Australian dollar. For one reason or another the Aussie was floated by Paul Keating in 1983 and we have been gradually working out it worth since then.

For the last number of years however the USD has been falling against with AUD, the US Sub-prime crisis seems to have shown a significant fall in the USD (seen as the spike below)



... that more or less has settled out and we're back to the regular fall in value we've seen over the last 5 or so years.

The EURO on the other hand has been more resilient to the USD issues. Tere have been some fluctuations up and down as the exposure to high US Dollar exposure was worked out (as well as some internal crises such as Greece).


Over all however the US Dollar has fallen from 85 EURO cents in the end of 2005 to be about 72c now. Representing a long term failure.
So when comparing the Australian Dollar to the EURO we see a more steady and even happening. The value has moved up from being worth 60 cents in 2005 to about 71cents.




To some extent I have felt that in the period from 2002 to 2008 the Aussie was undervalued. The market had not see the or understood commodity boom with China and the confusion of the sub prime crash in and around 2008 led to international uncertainty, but now we seem to be steadily moving away from these problems and being seen as we are (for what we are worth).

Good as Gold?

The use of Gold as a standard to determine currency has a long history, in fact its more illuminating when and why we have moved away from it. For example from this article we see the following points:

Governments faced with high levels of expenditure, but with limited sources of tax revenue, suspended convertibility of currency into gold on a number of occasions in the 19th century.

the US government did so during the US Civil War

As in previous major wars under the gold standard, the British government suspended the convertibility of Bank of England notes to gold in 1914 to fund military operations during World War I

When you look at the increase in value of Gold against the US Dollar it looks like its gone bezerk. The interesting thing however is when you compare it .

In the graph below (sourced from http://www.goldprice.org) I have altered the scales on the EURO by scaling the height of the graph. Both started from being worth about the same (4oo currency units)...


while the US has risen to being around 1500 currency units (dollars) the Euro is only fetching 1100.

So the moral of this post is that if you're wondering about how well you're doing, don't compare yourself to the US Dollar anymore. Because its falling, if you're on parity then you're falling too.

we used to do it

but now we don't ...
The Japanese were encouraged to broaden into it by the Americans after WW2.

whaling

It was only in 1962 that we closed the whaling at Tangalooma.

Which may seem like a long time ago to kiddies, but to people over 40 its within their lifetime.

Placed on the other side of Moreton Island its often only thought of by the local people as a resort, but it of course has a history which few know and fewer seem to consider today.

I am not wishing to defend whaling at all in the modern world. It is in my opinion an anachronism, something we once did but which has little or no relevance to us anymore.

There is no place for blame, it is pointless to say negative things about what we did in the past. But the future is a different thing. I don't wish to force anyone to give up their traditional practices, but the modern approach to whaling has little resemblance to that.

The picture below was taken at Tangalooma in about 1960, it shows two whales Humpback whales tied up at the bow of whale chaser. You can see on the deck the canon which fires the explosive tipped harpoon as well as a little rigging.


Today whaling is almost the iconic representation of over fishing, unsustainable practice and humans not being willing to change as our world changes (or as we create a new world).

Personally I would like to see the practice halted as it really provides little which can not be substituted with other items. We no longer need it for food and whale sourced oils are perhaps fully replaced by synthetics.

I think that its time to change ...