Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gellibrand for his question and assure him that, if there are future opportunities—and there should be between now and 2018—for visits to the Altona plant, I will invite him. He did, after all, get the best start to life that anyone could get in Australia, by being born in Toowoomba, and I am sure that, deep down somewhere, there is a lot more good that we can make of that. His choice in politics may have been dubious, but I am sure his heart is made of gold.

Regarding decisions made by Australian car manufacturers to cease operation, I draw to point the member for Gellibrand's assertions that our government was in any way responsible for those decisions, most particularly the decision of Toyota. Having known the Toyota management for as long as I have, dating back to 2001, when I was the minister for industry then, I can assure the member for Gellibrand that the government were given very clear indication by Toyota that, in spite of everything we had done and would do, they had made their decision to close. That decision was extremely difficult. The heads of Toyota, both here in Australia and in Japan, came up to Canberra especially to talk to me about that and to also meet with the Prime Minister and explain that decision, but it is a simple fact that, in relation to manufacturing cars in Australia, it is virtually impossible to compete. It needs to be remembered, and perhaps lamented, that the industry arrived at the point under the previous Labor government where it required $5,784 per vehicle, plus tariffs, to continue to operate in Australia.

I am an optimist. I have spent a lot of time in farming, where you have to be an optimist. In fact, I was a farmer longer than I have been a politician. If I looked at a component of my farming operation where taxpayers had to contribute that proportion, which is almost 15 and, in some cases, 20 per cent of the value of the vehicle, I would say, 'There is no hope.' Unfortunately, though, as I say, we lament it, there was no way in which Toyota, Holden, Ford and Mitsubishi—some of whom made those decisions when the Labor government was in power, some of whom made them since we came to power, but the result is the same—could continue. They all arrived at the same conclusion, and that was that the industry could no longer manufacture vehicles in Australia without long-term, substantial government-taxpayer funded subsidies. Unfortunately, because of the complete and absolute mess that the Labor Party left the finances in, the money that we would be paying the auto industry would have to be borrowed by taxpayers from overseas, and that is just sheer insanity. So, whilst we lament that the car industry has made those decisions, we as pragmatic, rational people understand why it made those decisions.

To assist the industry—and our understanding is that there are substantial numbers but certainly nowhere near the numbers that the member pointed out in that report; let us say the numbers are somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 people to find new work—we have established a $155 million growth fund in conjunction with the South Australian and Victorian governments and the auto industry. There will be $30 million made available for a skills and training program to assist workers to find new jobs outside the industry. There will be a $15 million automotive industrial structural adjustment fund, a $20 million automotive diversification fund for component manufacturers to go into other areas, a $60 million next-generation manufacturing investment program to bring new businesses to those regions and a $30 million regional infrastructure fund to put new regional infrastructure in for communities.

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