Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, Madam Speaker. The fact is that the government has made an assault on manufacturing industry—and the automotive industry in particular. This government has made an assault on the car industry. What the government needs to do is to work out what it is going to do to provide support for the workers who have lost their jobs. What intensive, tailored support will the government give the workers who will lose their jobs over the course of the next four years? How is the government going to ensure that the workers will transition into any jobs that become available? What sort of effort is the government going to put into looking after those workers?

The government has some other challenges which it must attend to immediately. One of them is making sure that what has just been done to Holden is not done to Toyota. Toyota has made it very clear that they face challenges, and they would expect, as any major company in this country would expect, that the Prime Minister and the government would sit down with them and work through the challenges to ensure that the jobs of the local workers in the company—and, indeed, the company itself—stay in this country. Do not use the way you have dealt with Holden as a template for the way you might engage with Toyota, because you get zero out of 10 as a government for your efforts today.

I finish by pointing out that the unemployment rate went up by 0.1 per cent today—and, of course, this increase happened even before the effects of the announcements which have been made in the last two weeks could be taken into account.

Mr Hockey interjecting—

The Treasurer wants to intervene. You should be ashamed of yourself. The fact that you even show your face in this place in this place is remarkable.

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