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

From Elizabeth to Nhulunbuy and from Altona to Western Australia—from south to north and from east to west—we have a country that is reeling from the job losses that have been caused by the actions and the inaction of this government. You never saw headlines like 'Road to recession' under Labor. You never saw a headline like that during the GFC, because we kept jobs growth strong. We never saw a headline like that.

It is this government that is undermining economic confidence by getting rid of the schoolkids bonus, by putting taxes on small businesses, by upsetting people and by destroying industries. We have seen it all too clearly in my community, in Elizabeth, because we remember the headline from 11 December: 'Hockey dares GM to leave'. That was in The Australian Financial Review. The very next day, on 12 December, it had the headline 'Holden's dramatic exit puts Toyota at risk'. So there should be no surprises for those opposite about what happened and about who was responsible, because we know. The financial paper of this country, The Financial Review, told us in its headlines who was responsible, who issued the ultimatums and who clicked over the first domino: first Holden goes, then Toyota goes and then the entire automotive component industry goes—thousands of jobs right around the country.

We have seen today the Victorian government having to step in, play the role of the national government and save SPC and a whole economic ecosystem around Shepparton—not just factory workers, who this lot blame for the currency and for every other economic problem this country has. We had the Victorian government having to come in, play the role of the national government and save SPC, save factory workers and save farmers.

Now Holden and Toyota have announced their closure. Those opposite want us to believe this $100 million is going to stretch right across the country to somehow compensate for and repair the damage that is being done. We will see a range of automotive component companies go, one after another. What we hear, rather than a plan, is platitudes. It stretches across industries: cars, alumina, whitegoods and food production. In South Australia we see shipbuilding looking down the barrel of the valley of death.

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