Category: future

Towards the post car society

Is the era of the automobile coming to an end as our society adapts to new technologies?

We don’t often think about it, but the design or our cities reflect the technologies of the day. Right now the way we live is built around the motor vehicle, but are we moving into a new era?

After a visit to Ford Australia’s Centre of Excellence For Design and Engineering, Neerav Bhatt has some thoughts on the role of the motor car in an era where people don’t have to travel to their workplaces.

One of Neerav’s points is that car use is falling among younger workers, a trend that’s happening across the western world.

Much of this is put down to the generations of Millennials and Gen-Ys being more interested in technology purchases rather than cars along with changing work patterns.

A more fundamental reason could be that we’re reaching the end of the motor car era.

If there is one technology that represents the Twentieth Century it is the motor car; the automobile has shaped our cities, our lifestyles and our culture.

However we are now in the Twenty-First Century.

The three eras of motoring

Roughly speaking, we could break the Twentieth Century’s love affair with the motor car into three phases; development, consolidation and dependency.

In the first period, the automotive industry was developing with thousands of manufacturers experimenting with the technology and production methods. At the same time governments were beginning to build road networks and communities were demanding improved links.

By the beginning of World War II, the motor car was an important part of life but ownership was largely restricted to affluent households and business.

Following World War II governments made huge investments in road networks and automobiles became cheaper to own.

This gave a generation a new taste of freedom as you could go anywhere with a tank of gas. It also changed the layout of our suburbs as people could now travel further to work, allowing them to move into bigger houses on the fringe of town.

As government investment was focused on road building, passenger train and tram networks were starved of capital with many cities abandoning their transit systems altogether.

Suburbs built in the early to mid Twentieth Century had evolved around trams and the legacy of that can still be seen today. However customers no longer wanted to fight for parking spots on crowded streets designed for horse drawn carriages and trams.

Responding to this developers started building supermarkets and shopping malls which became popular largely because they offered easier parking. Cheaper goods made available by improved logistics systems – another effect of the motor car – was the other main reason.

The beginning of dependency

With the advent of the 1970s oil shock, the role of the motor car turned from being a tool of liberation into one of dependency. The suburbs of the 1960s and 70s had been built around the assumption of universal car ownership and cheap fuel. When fuel ceased being cheap, then households budgets were affected.

Not coincidentally after the oil shock the reversal of ‘white flight’ – the movement of the middle classes to outer suburbs – started with the gentrification of inner suburbs that had been abandoned by the working class.

Through the 1970s and 80s the cost of owning a motor car became more expensive as governments stopped externalising the costs of maintaining roads and saw car use and petrol taxes as a revenue source.

At the same time the obvious effects of saturating society motor cars became obvious as roads increasingly became choked and planners began to realise that building more roads only attracted more traffic.

Times of decline

By the turn of the Twenty-first Century technology had also started to move away from centralised offices and factories. Today technologies like the internet and increasingly 3D printing mean that workers don’t have to commute vast distances. Automation also means many levels of management are no longer necessary.

Changing work patterns is also affecting incomes, with car ownership being expensive many employees – particularly young workers – don’t want to buy automobiles.

This all means that the era of the motor car is coming to an end, it’s not going to vanish quickly but the decline has started.

For business, this means the post World War II assumptions that saw the rise of the supermarket, shopping mall and big box discount store are no longer valid.

Some managers, most notably those of doomed department stores, won’t learn these lessons and will pass into history like the stagecoach companies.

Just as the end of the horse and carriage era saw the demise of buggy whip makers and blacksmiths, the rise of the motor car saw an unprecedented rise in wealth, employment and productivity. Not only were the lost jobs created elsewhere, but many more were created.

While the motor car isn’t going to disappear overnight, the decline has started and our society is adapting. For business and government leaders, the task is to understand those changes and adapt.

Image courtesy of a Norwegian motorway by Ayla87 through SXC

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Newly normal in the English Midlands

The new normal will be different to the old normal – is the English Midlands a vision of the future?

On their metal, a story from BBC Radio’s In Business program looked at how the English Midlands is dealing with the toughest economic conditions the beleaguered region has suffered for decades.

Once the centre of the industrial revolution, The Midlands have had a tough time of the last fifty years as the region caught the brunt of Britain’s de-industrialisation and the loss of thousands of engineering jobs.

Today, the surviving engineering companies are struggling to find new markets as orders from Europe dry up and many Midlands workers find they are confronting the ‘New Normal’.

The ‘New Normal’ for British industry is described by Mark Smith, Regional Chairman, Price Waterhouse Coopers Birmingham who points out that UK industries have to sell to the fast growing economies.

Interestingly this is similar, but very different in practice, to the Australian belief – where the Asian Century report sees Australia continuing being a price-taking quarry for Asia rather than selling much of real value – the Brits see some virtue in adding value to what they sell to Asia’s growing economies.

The British experience though shows the realities of the ‘New Normal’ for Western economies – the cafe owner featured in story now offers no dish over £3 and the idea of overpriced five quid tapas are long gone. The customers can’t afford it.

Part of this is because of the casualisation of the workforce as people find salaried jobs are no longer available and become freelancers or self-employed. One could argue this is the prime reason why unemployment hasn’t soared in the UK and US since the global financial crisis.

That ‘new normal’ features the precariat – the modern army of informal white and blue collar workers who have more in common with their grandparents who worked for day wages at the docks and factories in the 1930s than their parents who had safe, stable jobs through the 1950s and 60s.

For the precariat, the idea of sick leave, paid holidays or a stable career started to vanish after the 1970s oil shock and accelerated in the 1990s. The new normal is the old normal for them, there just happens to be more of them after the 2008 crash.

With a workforce increasingly working for casual wages without security of income, the 1980s consumerist business model built around ever increasing consumption starts to look damaged.

The same too applies to the banking industry which grew fat on providing the credit that unpinned the late 20th Century consumer binge.

When the 2008 financial crisis signalled the end of the 20th Century credit binge, the banks were caught out. Which is why governments had to step in to help the financial system rebuild its reserves.

The effects of that reserve building also affected businesses as bank credit dried up. Early in the BBC program Stuart Fell, the Chairman of Birmingham’s Metal Assemblies Ltd described how his bank decided to cut his line of credit from £800,000 to £300,000 which forced the management to find half a million pounds in a hurry.

That experience has been repeated across the world as banks have used their government support and easy money policies to recapitalise their damaged accounts rather than lend money to entrepreneurial customers to build businesses.

Businesses are now looking at other sources to find capital from organisations like the Black Country Reinvestment Society which is profiled in the story that raises money from local investors to provide small businesses with working capital.

Communities helping themselves and each other is the real ‘New Normal’ – waiting for the banks to lend money or hoping that surplus obsessed governments will save businesses or provide adequate safety will only end in disappointment as the real austerity of our era starts to be felt.

The New Normal is declining income for most people in the Western world and we need to think of how we can help our neighbours as most of us can be sure we’re going to need their help.

Just as the English Midlands lead the world into the industrial revolution, it may be that the region is giving us a view of what much of the Western world will be like for the next fifty years.

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Desperate Ken and market realities

Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market is giving some people a nasty slap over the head.

Ken Slamet has a problem, his in-laws are trying to sell the family house and no-one will give them the price they want.

The house at 228 Warrimoo Ave has been on the market through an agent for more than 100 days, pulling in ridiculously low offers, Mr Slamet said.

Depending on the deposit, Mr Slamet is seeking between $1.5 million and $1.6 million for the house his wife grew up in.

One would argue that those “ridiculously low offers” are actually Mr Market giving Ken and his in-laws a slap of reality. They are simply asking for too much money.

St Ives, a suburb on Sydney’s Upper North Shore, is going through demographic change. In 1960s and 70s St Ives was the suburb for successful stock brokers and bankers, however in the 1980s and 90s that demographic decided they wanted to live closer to the city and Harbour and suburbs like Mosman and Clontarf became their areas of choice.

For Ken’s in-laws and their neighbours, this is bad news as few other people can afford 1970s mansions on large blocks within 30km of Sydney. Those who do manage to sell often find the buyers are developers who sub-divide to build townhouses or apartment blocks, madness in a congested, car-dependent suburb with poor public transport links.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market is giving those holding properties that were attractive to stockbrokers in 1972 a nasty slap over the head in 2012.

Ken though has a solution for his problem – he’s offering a rent to buy scheme at a mere snip of $2297 per week. An amount 70% higher than the average Sydneysider’s gross income and a whopping four and half times the city’s average rent of $500.

Good luck with that.

The real problem is that Ken’s in-laws are stuck with expectations higher than the market reality. Like many of us in the Western world, they believe their assets are worth more than they really are.

As the global economy deleverages there will be many more people like Ken’s family. For many the transition to a less wealthy lifestyle is going to be tough.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 9: Deeper and broader relationships

Australia in the Asian Century concludes with a look at how we build relationships into Asia.

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

Australia in the Asian Century’s final chapter looks at how Australia can deepen relationships with its Asian neighbours. The chapter is full of fine ideas which don’t quite match the reality of government policies and spending.

Early in the chapter the white paper proposes increasing the number of Australian diplomats in Asia along with opening a new embassy in Ulan Baator, a Jakarta based ambassador to ASEAN and consulates in Shenyang , Phuket and eastern Indonesia.

Fine words, however Australia’s diplomatic corps has been shrinking for the last twenty years so staffing these facilities will require a withdrawal from other regions. The white paper doesn’t identify which countries Australia’s representation would be cut from and the consequences of that.

More importantly, it doesn’t identify how Foreign Affairs and Trade staff will be skilled up to man these facilities, instead we get another worthy ambition.

National objective 22. Australia will have the necessary capabilities to promote Australian interests and maintain Australia’s influence.

  • Australia’s diplomatic network will have a larger footprint across Asia.

Again, one would surely expect that Australia would already have the necessary capabilities to promote its national interest and maintain influence. Is the white paper suggesting we don’t?

Which leads us to the next national objective;

National objective 23. Australia will have stronger and more comprehensive relationships with countries across the region, especially with key regional nations—China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.

If we accept the assumption which underlies the entire paper, that Asia is going to continue to grow both economically and in influence then this will happen regardless of what governments do. It’s a meaningless and silly statement which once again ignores most of Asia and simplifies the dynamics.

The Australia Network

One of the great wastes of the Howard years was the dismembering of Radio Australia which was a cheap and effective way of projecting ‘soft power’ across the region. I personally came across this as a backpacker in China where many manual workers in the hard seat carriages practiced their Australian accented English that they’d learned on Radio Australia’s programs.

This was shut down by one of the spiteful, stupid and poorly thought out decisions that were the hallmark of the Howard government.

Replacing this was a new Australia network that replaced the previous awful overseas television service which had been a niche product on Asian cable TV channels – I had it on my Thai cable subscription when I lived in Bangkok. It was rarely watched.

The Australia Network hasn’t been a great success and that is largely due to the funding – the 2011-21 contract was costed at $221 million in the budget papers.

A break out box in the white paper boasts about the Australia Channel and its “mandate to encourage awareness of Australia, promote cross-cultural communication and build regional partnerships.”

Listed is the funding for some other services – Al Jazeera, $359 million in 2009; CCTV, $280 million in 2009 and NHK World/Radio, $226 million in 2008.

With the Australia Network receiving less than a tenth of this funding, it’s no surprise the station looks amateurish and irrelevant. Once again we see the difference between government words and government deeds.

Which brings us to the final two national objectives;

National objective 24. Australia will have deeper and broader people to people links with Asian nations, across the entire community.

National objective 25. Australia will have stronger, deeper and broader cultural links with Asian nations.

Again these are more motherhood statements and barely worth considering. The section itself skates over some of Australia’s most important assets – the cultural diversity and immigrant communities.

That the final chapter spends just a few pages on this aspect probably sums up the entire project – simple, full of motherhood statements and missing the critical strengths and threats to Australia’s, and Asia’s growth.

Overall the paper is a disappointment that tells us little we didn’t already know while stating some big ambitions which successive governments have shown they aren’t capable of delivering.

The message for those building Australia’s 21st Century links with Asia is not to wait for government but to get on and do it.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 8: Building sustainable security in the region

What are the security issues for the Asia in the 21st Century

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The eighth chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at the security picture of the region, this is one of the bigger chapters and like some of the others it’s as notable for what it leaves out as for what it says.

National objective 20. Australian policies will contribute to Asia’s development as a region of sustainable security in which habits of cooperation are the norm.

That’s nice, worthy and has been undoubtedly true for most previous Australian governments. Except of course when Australian Prime Ministers join the prevailing colonial power in wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaya, Korea, Vietnam or kicking around the German territories in World War I.

Chapter Eight partly dives into territory already covered in Chapter Three, this time though the analysis does discuss the United States’ role in more detail and makes the observation that US military spending dwarfs that of any other Asian nation – interestingly this is one of the few times Russia gets a mention in the entire report.

Encouragingly, the paper doesn’t confine the concept of ‘security’ just to military matters and takes a broader view of issues such as guaranteeing access to resources, food and water. There is some discussion of climate change and on regional responses to natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

One notable omission is that of refugees. Given that most of the asylum seekers arriving by boat are Asian – currently coming from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – and almost all pass through other Asian countries, it would be expected this issue would get some exploration. Sadly it doesn’t and once again skirting over an important issue detracts from the paper’s substance.

As befits Australia’s most important relationships in Asia, there is a lot of discussion of the three way relationship between China, the United States and Australia with a detailed breakout box in section 8.4.

The discussion on Australia’s relations between China and the US makes an interesting statement;

In managing the intersections of Australia’s ties with the United States and China, we will need a clear sense of our national interests, a strong voice in both relationships and effective diplomacy.

Undoubtedly this statement is true, however successive Australian governments have conflated the interests of the United States with being the same as Australia’s. In recent times Australian leaders have followed the US lead even when it has been clear American policy conflicts with Australia’s Chinese relations.

Moving away from a reflex support of the United States is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Australian governments in the Asian Century and one hopes the process is as gradual and incident free as the white paper hopes.

National objective 21.The region will be more sustainable and human security will be strengthened with the development of resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water.

National objective 21 is an interesting statement in itself – “resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water” smacks of the 1980s privatisation and corporatism that has left Australia with duopoly industries and an excessive financialisation of those markets for basic needs.

It may well turn out to be the case that Asian countries choose not to follow that path, particularly those like the Philippines and Indonesia who have experienced the effects of crony capitalism in recent history.

Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century finishes with a detailed look at the regional efforts aimed at building trust and co-operation on trans-national issues.  Much is made of various international groups such as the G20 and the UN.

An interesting case study is that of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty with an examination of Japan’s and Australia’s work in that field. Sadly this is another area that’s let down by the actions of current and previous Australian governments in selling uranium to India.

The nuclear weapons stand off between India, Pakistan and China is another ‘elephant in the room’ issue that doesn’t really get the coverage it should in such a report.

Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century is a very optimistic section of the report however it does hint at the path Australia could follow to being a credible, medium sized economy and influencer in the region. However one has to consider the actions of Australian leaders when asking if the nation is really interested in taking that path.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Building the agriculture industry

How can Australia improve agricultural exports to Asia?

Before going into Chapter 8, the Australia in the Asian Century report has a detailed look at the agriculture industry. Which kicks off with National Objective number 19;

National objective 19. Australia’s agriculture and food production system will be globally competitive, with productive and sustainable agriculture and food businesses.

While this objective seems to have already been achieved, the bulk of the chapter does a good job of identifying the opportunity and challenges for the industry.

The examination of trade treaties, biosecurity and food security is a good overview of the industry however it does suffer from a rose coloured view of prospects and government programs.

Issues such as protectionism, genetically modified foods and the running sore of live cattle exports don’t get a mention.

Another aspect of this section is how the aspirations don’t match the actions of governments, for instance the industry capture of regulators – the case of defining free range eggs being a good example – is a real barrier to Australia selling quality produce internationally.

While the section does discuss ‘value adding’, the tenor of the section seems to be focused on bulk exports and really doesn’t identify industries such organics and free range which are an opportunity for the agricultural industry.

Overall though, this section at least does give a reasonably detailed snapshot of an industry and its a shame the paper doesn’t attempt to profile other sectors in the Australian economy.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Seven: Connecting to Asian Markets

How can Australia improve its business, trade and government links with Asian countries?

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The seventh chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at how the country’s businesses and governments can engage with markets in Asia. In some ways this is the most effective chapter of the report.

At the beginning of the chapter introduction points out that Asia offers bigger markets than Australia and says “Australian businesses need to build on their existing advantages by developing new capabilities and approaches as they become fully part of the region.”

This is true, but the Chapter never really identifies what Australia business’ existing advantages really are and again this is a weakness in the report.

National objective 17. Australia’s businesses will be recognised globally for their excellence and ability to operate successfully in Asian markets.

How this comes about is difficult to say, and what governments can actually do to help businesses be recognised globally isn’t really identified.

The CPA case study is notable for illustrating the number of Australian expats working in Asia. In many ways these people are the wasted talents that should have been cultivated by domestic businesses through the 1990s and 2000s.

Saying that businesses need to be part of the global supply chain is a statement of the obvious and Chapter 7.3 does discuss the importance of efficient ports, fast customs procedures and reduced barriers to trade. This ties into National Objective 18a.

National objective 18a.The Australian economy will be more open and integrated with Asia, through efforts to improve our domestic arrangements. The flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people will be easier.

  • Australia’s trade links with Asia will be at least one-third of GDP by 2025, up from one-quarter in 2011.

It’s difficult to argue with this objective, although one wonders what Canberra has been doing for the last twenty years on smoothing the flow of goods, services, capital and ideas. Hopefully this is one of the relatively easy areas where a Gillard, or Abbott, government can deliver.

National objective 18b. The Australian economy will be more open and integrated with Asia, through comprehensive regional agreements, better aligned economic regulations, greater infrastructure connectivity and enhanced understanding of each country’s arrangements. The flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people will be easier and Australian businesses and investors will have greater access to opportunities in Asia.

This objective focuses around formal trade links and really only describes the current policy – continued from the Howard government – of signing bilateral trade agreements rather than waiting for the cumbersome and possibly never ending global negotiations to actually deliver something.

Most of Chapter Seven is focused on describing the various trade initiatives the Australian government is engaged in through APEC, ASEAN and various other forums.

All of these are good initiatives and these are the brightest spot in the entire report, this is where the Australian political system has delivered bipartisan support for a long term plan and it’s a shame we can’t see more actions similar to this in areas like education, taxes and sustainability.

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