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

I thank the honourable member for his question. The car companies based in Detroit are of course critical to the future of the global car industry, whether we are talking about GM or Ford or, in the case of the United States, Chrysler as well. For Australia, the other big player of course is Toyota and its headquartered operations in Nagoya. On an earlier visit to Japan I spoke with the CEO of Toyota, Mr Watanabe, and also on a subsequent visit to Australia by Mr Watanabe in Melbourne. The industry minister himself has been to Detroit and spoken with the heads of the two car companies in recent times. Of course, discussions have occurred with greater intensity in recent times between the Australian heads of the car companies concerned and they in turn have been in contact with their headquarters.

The bottom line is this, and I say to the former minister: this proposal by Australia for the future is to support our car industry, which employs directly and indirectly 200,000 Australians. We take that as a serious responsibility for the future. When the car industry in Australia is under challenge from the global financial crisis and the global economic downturn, when the car industry globally is facing similar challenges, either you can stand idly by and allow problems to simply mount or you can assist. We have chosen a path of active assistance but a path of active assistance which has conditionalities attached. The conditionalities, for the benefit of the information of the honourable member, are those I described before—that is, we are only investing in the future of the car industry based on explicit commitments to invest from the car companies and on a specific co-investment ratio, which was articulated clearly in the statement issued by the industry minister on the day this package was announced.

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