Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The global car industry right now, as the honourable member would well know, from Detroit to other car manufacturing centres around the world, is under great stress and pressure. So the alternatives are for any governments around the country to simply turn their backs on that or, as governments past, both Liberal and Labor, have done in this country, to put their shoulders to the wheel in fashioning a new car plan for the future. However, we have done so with a new element, and that is to ensure that we will enable the industry to transform itself over time. What I am concerned about is ensuring that we provide sufficient confidence and underpinnings for the industry going forward at a time when the global financial crisis is bearing down on so many.

I realise that this is something which may not attract automatic bipartisan support on the part of those opposite. In fact, I am informed that the member for Curtin has already been on the telephone this morning to various people in the car industry seeking to get up and running some negative comment against the package that we have just launched. The old bush telegraph works fairly quickly—it came back to us fairly quick smart.

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