Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Holden have been a good company to this country. They deserve better than the schoolyard baiting and taunting of the Treasurer of Australia. On Wednesday we saw the Treasurer of Australia, puffed up and proud, saying, 'We're not going to be played in a game of bluff by Holden.' He was right. He was not up to playing a game of poker with them. Joe Hockey called their bluff and now he has thousands of jobs around his neck.

His failure and that of the Prime Minister to keep Holden will be a defining moment of this government. The brand of Holden used to mean motor cars; now it means coalition job cuts. Let us not, in all of this process, blame the workers. We have seen sinister anti-worker attacks by some opposite, creeping from under the rocks. I acknowledge that the Prime Minister said, 'We don't blame the workers.' It is a shame, Prime Minister, that the members behind you are saying, 'They're paid too much.' In what could only be a brain snap a certain Liberal powerbroker backbencher from New South Wales—the member for Mitchell—tweeted that Holden workers are paid three times too much. They say that a tweet and its twit are soon separated. They certainly are! The member for Mitchell said that Holden workers are paid three times what they should be paid. The base rate of a Holden worker is $48,000. What a marvellous industrial relations prescription we have running on the back bench!

Let's not blame the workers. Let us acknowledge that this government has not done what it should have done for these jobs. Let us acknowledge also that there will be a real cost—I do not mean an electoral cost—in terms of thousands of jobs. There are 2,900 direct employees of Holden but how many component workers are supplying that Holden factory—making every part of that motor car? Treasurer, there are thousands more. That you do not know means that you should hang your head in shame.

Let's look at this marvellous saving that these economic rationalists opposite are talking about. They have said: 'We've outsmarted Holden. We're not going to give them $120 million. We're too smart; we're the coalition.' How much extra will those on the other side of the chamber pay in unemployment benefits and forgone taxes?

I know that most members opposite, at the human level, if they have had a family member who has lost a job would appreciate this point. Perhaps a couple over there would not but most of them would. They would appreciate the pressure on families. I have seen it when people have lost their jobs and I am sure some opposite have, too. Wait until mum and dad come home and they see the decision by Holden. The kids will be asking, 'What does this mean for our jobs?' Mum and dad will say, 'We've got a government that's too spineless to stand up for us, who won't find the money; but, do you know what?—we'll have to pay more taxes to pay for the retraining.' I love it!

Out in Senator-Abetz-land, he is saying, 'It'll be all right for those Holden workers. They can go to work in a uranium mine that has not yet started in the middle of the South Australian desert at Olympic Dam.'

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