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Industry
goes immoral
Here
a piece of torrid news. Which speaks for the plight of the lower
layers of Australian society. With a per capita income of $15,000.
Australia is not a poor country. Let alone the poorest. Yet the
financial stress is seen everywhere.
Worse, a new breed of entrepreneurs are out to cash in on the
“chance” presented by the sociological disabilities. Floating
corporate brothels.
The raw material is available in plenty, they say. As per
disclosures, even in Parliament, the member of young women drifting
into prostitution is on the rise. Most of them, students, do so to
meet the high cost of food, rent and other needs.
There are 10,000 sex workers in New South Wales alone. Ten per cent
of them are university students, four per cent from tertiary
institutes and six per cent attend less formal types of courses. Ads
promising them “good pay and flexible hours” are placed in
strategic spots like toilets.
Among those planning to make the best out of the unfolding
opportunities is Daily Planet. The Melbourne based company is well
on the way to do it big. It is warming up for a public issue of A$50
million plus and a A$12 million in private placement.
All is being done with much hype. Being industry, the profession is
no longer known by its old name – at least among select Australian
entrepreneurs. It is now adult industry or gaudy property. The
red-light area is also out of fashion.
The core of the Daily Planet project is a five-star hotel. Not the
dim cubicles in the red-light area. Revenue comes mainly from hourly
room-rents. At the rate of A$ 120 an hour. Foods and beverages and
poolside tables are outside the mainstream. Annual revenue from a
single room works out to A$120 x 24 x365. No risk of unsold rooms.
So, the outlook is bright.
Not that the Daily Planet is first on the road. Founded in 1975, it
followed in the footsteps of German sex store chains. They were also
“massively popular and profitable”. With unlimited
opportunities. Only Daily Planet is the biggest. It calls itself as
the biggest – an empire in effect.
Moral turpitude? For you and me, yes. But not for the stock exchange
here. If the listing rules are followed, the exchange has no
objections. It sees it only as business, making after all, money.
Now the sex industry dubbed as the newest of the new, is outside the
pale of recession, which roils the old industries. Hit by a rising
Australian dollar, exports are dropping at the rate of 2 per cent
and imports being sucked in, are up by a similar margin. The
currency reclaimed half of 15 per cent fall this year. Helped in
part by the hike in bank rate twice to 4.75 per cent from its 30
year lows. Even so the trade front looks far from healthy.
Projections place Australia’s trade deficit this year at A$26.8
billion rising to A$28.7 billion in the next. At around 1.7 per cent
of GDP in each case. Only one consolation is that it will not rise
above 6 per cent set during SE Asian financial crisis.
Most worrisome is the weakness in rural production and exports –
of canola, cotton, wool and cereals. No early improvement is also on
the cards. For Australian farmland is in the grip of a drought.
Indications are that another EL Nino is in the offing in the
Pacific. Last time the dreaded weather took away 10 per cent of
Australia’s agricultural output.
Beyond El Nino, Australia sees gold. Its $25 billion deal with China
comes as the blockbuster. The supply of natural gas will begin in
2005. and continue for 25 years. The LNG processing facilities will
double and over 100,000 will benefit in new jobs. Exchequer gains
are placed at $50 million a year.
Everyone is celebrating the gas deal, which a joint venture led by
Woodside Energy Co. landed trouncing five others in global tenders.
Prime minister John Howard is in high spirits. He recently called
for speedy removal trade barriers. And exhausted European industries
to invest in Australia, where the economy is ‘sparkling form’.
Across the Tasman Sea the fight is for (and not against) inflation.
The genes of spiralling prices that plagued the New Zealand industry
for 20 years till early 90s, is well in bottle. A by-product of low
inflation was its productivity and growth.
The growth rate then was kept at below 0.3 per cent. Lest
inflationary pressures should swell. As a result per capita GDP
stayed flat at $13,000. The new government wants it up a few notches
at $20,000. Logically, inflation is in order to let the economy peak
up to 0.4 per cent growth. |
