Quote:

 

State's economy slips

Josh Gordon
January 19, 2012



VICTORIA is at the centre of a national economic slowdown, with faltering building activity and a rapidly deteriorating outlook for jobs. The state is lagging the nation on 12 out of 14 key economic measures, with a sharp drop in job vacancies and building approvals, slowing business investment and flagging construction work.

Treasurer Kim Wells warned there was ''no question'' the state government would need to work hard to keep the economy growing, saying it had been vindicated in taking tough decisions in last month's mini-budget to shore up the bottom line, including slashing 3600 public service jobs.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/states-economy-slips-20120118-1q6pd.html#ixzz1jsEHL6V3

Quote:

 

Downturn on the rise in a state of fear

Ruth Williams, Tim Colebatch, Craig Butt and Mark Hawthorne
March 17, 2012

Victoria's economy rode out the global financial crisis reasonably unscathed, but the inevitable bumps in the road have begun to take their toll.

MATT Hampton can drive around his home town of Nyora, in Gippsland, and point with pride at sheets of metal he made while working at BlueScope Steel's Hastings plant. Hampton, 38, worked for 15 years at BlueScope, until late last year when he was ordered into a room and offered one of hundreds of redundancies announced by the company in August. He decided to get out - while ''the going was good''.

"We were a bit dumbfounded,'' Hampton says. ''Nobody ever saw that kind of thing coming.''

But since finishing in October, Hampton has looked for work in his local area without success. Some of his former colleagues have tried their hands at small business, some have tried the mines, some are still ''twiddling their thumbs''. Hampton plans to look for work in other parts of the state - or outside the state altogether. "I've lived in Victoria all my life and I love Victoria, but if I have to move to another state, so be it,'' he says. ''It's the state that's going to suffer."

The state, it seems, is already suffering. In recent weeks, Victorians have been bombarded with a string of bad news, as the state tries to survive and prosper in the shadow of a mining boom that, while physically concentrated in a few pockets of the country, is reshaping the national economy. In the six months to February, Victoria lost a net 27,700 jobs, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In the year to February, Victorian unemployment has risen from 4.8 per cent to 5.4 per cent, 0.2 percentage points higher than the national rate. The latest national accounts - released last week - suggest Victoria is close to joining South Australia and Tasmania in recession, with spending in the state declining 0.4 per cent in the second half of 2011.

On Thursday, the Baillieu government revealed a plunge in taxation revenue, driven by the damp consumer confidence that is hurting retailers and a housing market now receding after defying the gloom for so long. Meanwhile, the stunning strength of the Australian dollar, a byproduct of the boom, is punishing Victoria's still-substantial manufacturing industry, eroding the retail sector, deterring foreign students and tempting tourists away from domestic destinations.

For the first decade of this century, Victoria consistently outperformed the other south-eastern states. It built more new homes than any other state, providing affordable new homes on its fringe, particularly in the west, and it attracted the largest share of foreign students. Melbourne became seen as Australia's cool city, attracting tourists and interstate migrants, and it expanded rapidly in high-value services sectors, such as finance and the professions.

But in the past year, those sources of growth have shut down. Housing starts have shrunk from 16,000 in the September quarter of 2010 to 12,000 15 months later.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/downturn-on-the-rise-in-a-state-of-fear-20120316-1vaux.html#ixzz1pW9fmp8I

HSRboy

19 Mar 2012, 11:02 AM

But the bulls assured us the mining boom in WA would secure the future of industries in Victoria which have nothing to do with mining. :what:

And that somehow property prices in Melbourne will stop going down. :unsure: