Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Hansard source

Although I am a newcomer to this place, I understand that this would be the first time that the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party has been reduced to speaking in the last five-minute slot. What a shame, with the success of Peter Costello, that the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party is being treated with such disrespect by her own party as to be made the nightwatchwoman in this very sad debate.

I have waited for an hour in this MPI to hear the killer blows on the Treasurer. I realise now that those opposite are putting forward five little points. The first point they have made is that somehow Mr Grant is the only person that the Treasurer has assisted. This is not at all true. Mr Greg Cohen, a director of Ford Credit, recalled in his cross-examination by Senator Abetz that at least three or four people with many more communications than Mr Grant were promoted. Yet the opposition bangs on like a broken record on this issue. In fact, between 15 October 2008 and 19 June 2009, there were something like 130 emails from Mr Grech to the Treasurer, 20 of which related directly to car dealers. Again, even though they try to say that Mr Grant received special treatment, Michael Delaney, the head of the Motor Traders Association of Australia, has made it clear that many people received assistance from the government.

The second proposition that the opposition have tried to raise on this issue during this MPI is that sending faxes home somehow proves something sinister. Their third proposition is that to send a fax home on a Friday night must clearly indicate some sort of malfeasance. Not at all—in fact, as the Treasurer has already related, there were 209 faxes this year alone, comprising 1,487 pages. Indeed, 4,638 pages have been sent to the Treasurer’s house since 2007. If we go further, another implication is that raising the issue of individual car dealers with Ford somehow left Ford with no choice but to look at these matters. This is not true and actually gets to the heart of the issue that the Treasurer was dealing with. In the car-dealing industry in Australia, there are 1,400 new car dealers with 3,500 outlets. Over a million new cars were sold in 2007-08. The new car retailers have an estimated turnover of $47 billion and 52,000 people are directly employed. There was a liquidity crisis late last year for car dealerships previously financed by GE Money and GMAC. This led to the establishment of the OzCar SPV. Ford Credit—the parent company in America—had not made any decisions at the time of the foundation of the SPV in December last year to withdraw from the Australian market. However, following complex negotiations, signalled already I stress by the government in December—because the arrangements for Ford were different from those for GE Money and GMAC—Ford Credit was eventually included in the facility. There we have it. The Treasurer, his office, his officials and the government as a whole, on the one hand, have been endeavouring to ensure that there was no collapse of the car industry.

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