Phil, is this really the case, or just after you take into account the possibility of avoiding duty and so on?
It's really the case for a lot of items, businesses pay duty either way air or seaport, so I'm just talking about the delivery related costs. Obviously the bigger something gets like a SUP the only way to go is sea, but say even a short surfboard starts getting close.
That's why especially electrical retailers are really going off about the Duties and GST because when they should have had a decent buffer in bulk freight advantages, they have effectively been negated, cos the freight costs for both competitors is basically the same.
Just out of interest, how expensive is it to ship things in containers?
I'll try and dig up some invoices later and compare maybe something similar I got both ways. There are a lot of variables.
To be fair with or without the unions the Port is a natural monopoly, so you could easily get the situation where a private company rips off the customer and also treats the guys like ****. My opinion is that is what happened with Telstra, and now we have people being charged immoral rates for certain things like international roaming.
And...we seem to have gotten to the stage where we have two classes of workers, those with Government type jobs with a certain level of conditions, and those in 'the normal' workforce who have the legislated conditions. It pisses me that Labor has a system that works only for one class of worker. Where's the socialism?
Banana Republic? Yes, I think mining has done that for us, and unfortunately efforts to provide alternative industries seem to have stalled. I suspect the high AUD has made this a problem.
Banana city! I feel like I'm in Canarvon, I am an alternative industry, efforts to provide a ****ing alternative! all retailers want is a level bloody playing field and not their government actively subsidising our competitors, that's all, Christ whats so ****ing hard about it, how about they pay an extra 20% duties and tax, see how that feels.
We should be allowed to be competitive, the whole country that is, how about if the retailers drop their margins, then the govt also drops their charges, the Pollies cut their staff in half, the ALP only looks after the working poor, and we all help the truly disadvantaged.
