Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

This is an extremely important issue, so I thank the member for Wakefield for his supplementary question. Here again the government is managing the government to support jobs, and the motor-vehicle-manufacturing sector of this country is extremely important to our economy. Take, for example, the fact that 15 per cent of the research and development expenditure in our manufacturing sector is in the car industry alone. The car industry directly employs 46,000 people; another 200,000-odd people indirectly depend upon the industry. It is extremely important that that industry, which is at the high-value-added end of our manufacturing, achieves government support.

On the other side of parliament we have the contrary story. The opposition would take—

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