Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will tell you the direct impact. The direct impact is estimated to be $40 per vehicle—$40! Oh my God—$40 a vehicle! Just to give you a bit of a perspective: every time the dollar appreciates by 1c, the price of a $25,000 car goes up $250. So it just gives you a bit of an idea about where Australia's manufacturing challenges lie: they lie in the high dollar. They do not lie in carbon pricing. My bet is that the carbon-pricing system is designed to reward efficiency. So I am pretty sure that if all these factories and all these suppliers have a good look at their carbon outlays they can lower that figure even further.

A big employer in my electorate, Holden, has now got a guarantee of producing two new models, guaranteeing production to 2022, based on a co-investment by the government. That co-investment is pretty important and it is pretty important that Liberal candidate Tom Zorich actually backs the government and gets in the ear of the Leader of the Opposition and in the ear of his colleagues Mr Briggs from Mayo and others, to try to get them to back the car industry. I know it is hard for him but that is the challenge for him at this election: to get them to support the government's policy. A difficult problem, I think, for his candidacy. But it is terribly important for the local area, because we need car manufacturing. It is the heart of Elizabeth. It is why I spent a lot of time, along with my colleagues in this place, talking to ministers, lobbying ministers and making sure they understood the importance of this industry to South Australia. It is a critical industry for South Australia. We cannot get by without it. It is a critical industry for Australia. It is important that the guys who want to buy utes in Queensland have an Australian choice. It is important that New South Welshmen and those in WA can buy an Australian made car. That is an important thing—to have the Australian choice. There is not a car on the roads these days that is not taxpayer supported. It is just that some are supported by German taxpayers or by South Korean taxpayers or by Chinese taxpayers.

So let us not hear this argument that this is somehow about competitive markets. Every country that produces cars provides support, and often they provide more support than we do. This has been a good policy. It has supported employment, it has supported manufacturing, it has supported exports, it supports Australian success and it should be backed by the Liberal Party. I hope they come to their senses. There would be nothing that would please me more if this were not an issue at the next election, if this were an issue of bipartisan support for the Australian car industry. That is what I want and that is what I would ask my Liberal opponents, both those opposite and locally—Tom Zorich—to do.

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