this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
22 points (95.8% liked)

Australia

4842 readers
186 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
lodion@aussie.zone
bestusername@aussie.zone
eatham@aussie.zone
Nath@aussie.zone
22
The year of the bailout: Australia’s biggest aluminium smelter next in line for taxpayers’ cash (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by Vulpin@lemmy.world to c/australia@aussie.zone
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Clearly, high energy costs lie at the heart of the challenges facing Australia’s power-intensive heavy industries, which also face intense international competition.

The industry minister, Tim Ayres, on Tuesday pointed to “a very tough and volatile global trading environment in aluminium”, including “over-subsidisation in some markets, tariff responses in others”.

The west still doesn't know how to counter China

Reeve said the lesson was that governments should be thinking harder about how to support the long-term viability of industries considered strategically important, beyond simply showering them in cash.

Agreed

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

High energy costs, meanwhile my solar feed-in rate is at 1c/kW.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 1 points 3 months ago

if smelters only ran 8-3pm they’d be golden

[–] hanrahan@piefed.social 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Reeve said the lesson was that governments should be thinking harder about how to support the long-term viability of industries considered strategically important, beyond simply showering them in cash.

Agreed

Well, they havent figured it out in 100 years seems they're unlikey to now ? Look at ths stupidity that is steel, we have the iron ore on one side of the country and the coking coal on the other, just need a railway between the two and make our own steel but no...

Another example, look at cars, throw money at it until they say fuck it, then it collapses. What was the strategy there, aside from pork barelling ? Why not use that money to move the nation away from Cars ? We have zero stategic oil reseves anyway. We're 2 weeks away from complete fucking disaster.

What are we doing with the Al here that we produce ? I assume it's nearly all exported anyway

I would have some sympathy if we were supporting a vertically integrated industry delivering end products to Australians and overseas but is that what we're doing ?

Or will we just sell subsidised Al to China to make shit to sell back to us ? And then spend a gazzilion to buy submaries on the pretext of the great red Chinese threat, our biggest customer and trading partner ?

What a fucking mess :). Donald Horne was right back in the '60s, we're a nation of fools led by idiots (paraphrasing) and nothing has changed