And yet, STILL Gina made NINETEEN BILLION DOLLARS last financial year.

Because when you reach a certain 'level' NOTHING can touch you.

And the great thing is, a Pilbara Iron Ore mine owned by Gina Rineheart has got permission from the federal government to bring in the entire workforce from overseas, without even trying to get local workers first.  It's one thing to oppose the mining tax, it's another to be able to not even bother to try to employ workers that, you know, actually live in the place the resources are coming from?

And you'd think, with all that money, she'd invest in a friggin' facelift... tho with a triple chin like hers, it'd probably take a piece of heavy lifting machinery from one of her mines to make any real difference.  Yup, she's got a head on her like a bucketful of scrotums.

More importantly, me thinks, she should do something positive for the environment and conservation.... like liposuction, for instance.  With the amount of by-product drained from her ginormous gut n' arse, there'd be enough blubber to keep the Japanese whaling fleet from ever having to put to sea again.

Well tetleytea, that is an interesting perspective.  Thanks.   What would you say if there are two equally skilled workers, one is local, one isn't?   That's the only caveat I'd have with no discrimination.

One mans plague is another mans Home Defense.

 The little buggers appear to be doing their job.

LOL, Fuzzy. You shouldn't bait the poor sharks that way.

It's true:  I mean, how can you beat up your local senator because the receiving country is resisting receiving you?  You have to beat up the other country's parliament.   Well, you can't do that either...you're a foreigner.   The only way to make it work is to drive a reciprocity agreement, and now you're trying to drive TWO countries to do something you want.  Good luck with that. 

All skills being equal, naturally an employer would tend to want the local first, for a few reasons:  you can get an earlier starting date from the local guy, less risk, and usually the employer would be picking up relocation expenses.  And then you get the chicken-and-the-egg problem I'm hitting:  the employer doesn't want to deal with all the legal immigration issues.  Which I'm saying I wish we didn't have legal immigration issues....   But if you're in a situaton where all this doesn't really apply (such as I'm already there; I'm just a foreigner who's already there), personally I would pick the foreign worker because i want the diverse mindset.  I want to form a multicultural team who think very differently from one another. 

I'm afraid that the import of workers into Australia has little to do with getting the right person for the job, but more to get the right person for the price. We have some of the best wage and conditions for workers in the world. The mining elite have been arguing to import workers to break the unions and to keep prices and conditions down.

They won't put in programs to train people for positions, they want the government to put the time and money in it. They get huge tax breaks and funding so they will continue to grow, at the cost the voters and a cause of inflation. And now Gina get to import cheaper workers so she can maximize profits ... something she has been pushing well before the mining boom.

Next thing you know the Australian government will let her use nukes for mining, another thing she would like to do 

but then the crocs do go and get their own out of the boats with the pet food that is seat-belted, and even occasionally they have  sunk boats to get the pet food out of the boats.

but the crocs do check out the boats to see if there are any aussies on them, and if there is, then they leave that boat alone ( I think that they look for the battered akubra hats, and if they do not see any then they know it is safe to eat that boat load)

harpo

I blame the Mercator map projection most schools used when we were growing up. For the longest time a lot of my friends thought Greenland was just as big as Africa. Of course in that projection Austrailia still looks about the size of the US, but it's right next to a gargantuan Antarctica and looks tiny by comparison.

NEWS FLASH

In Australia you can now be fined 1.1 million dollars if you blame rising prices on the carbon tax.  No joke.

"The Tax That Shall Not Be Named."

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/the-truth-will-out-on-labors-carbon-scam/story-e6frezz0-1226197176697

What I find amusing is this is a 'travel blog'.....

http://www.hotelclub.com/blog/the-10-most-dangerous-animals-in-australia/