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

It is my very sad duty to speak on the Automotive Transformation Scheme Amendment Bill 2014. The bill obviously involves a $500 million cut to our automotive industry and, in particular, to the components industry that lies behind it. Let's make no mistake: this bill continues with the vandalism that this government has wrought on what was and still is today a very important Australian industry and a very important industry to my electorate, and, obviously, to my state and the southern part of Australia—and to the rest of Australia too. It importantly represents one of our key manufacturing industries and one that so many other industries took their skills and R&D from.

This $500 million cut, as exposed by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries last year, jeopardises an industry that provides the economy with about $21 billion worth of investment and other economic benefits each year. For that $500 million, you were getting $21 billion—that is what the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries said in their press release on 4 November 2013. This is an industry which is not just important for investment, jobs, our national capacity, our ability to manufacture things like cars but a whole range of other products in this country.

The previous speaker, the member for Bradfield, talked about what Mr Devereux said at the time of closure. He talked about volumes but he began with the high cost of the Australian dollar—and this was referred to by the member for Melbourne in his address. This was the No. 1 issue affecting not just Australian automotive industries but Australian industries generally. It did not matter in my electorate if you talked to farmers, people who owned wineries who exported wine or people who made and exported cars: the persistent high value of the Australian dollar from about 2006 onwards has been a real issue for Australian industry.

We all know the economic fundamentals that led to that: high commodity prices and a disruption of the world's currencies caused by the global financial crisis. The persistent high value in the Australian dollar was only ever going to be an event that lasted for a period of time. It is important that we understand that the dollar was the real issue behind the difficulties that the automotive industries and a whole lot of industries had. It wasn't wages. It wasn't the workers. It wasn't work practices. It wasn't unions. It wasn't consumer preferences—all these things like straw men that have been thrown up in this debate; it was the effect of the Australian dollar. It was the effect of currency movements: an appreciation of the Australian dollar while many of our competitor countries depreciated their currencies at the same time to lift their exports.

The Australian car industry faced a situation where the dollar was persistently high on one hand, but the yen plunged as a deliberate act of Japanese government policy on the other. Japanese cars became $5,000 cheaper in six months not because of anything other than currency movements.

We should not have those opposite coming into this place and saying: 'It's the straw men. It's the workers. It's the unions. It's the Labor Party. It's industry subsidies' and all that sort of nonsense. It was the Australian dollar that caused many of the issues. It did not just cause issues in the automotive industry; as I said before, I have spoken to many other companies which have had the same problems.

The dollar has now come down quite a bit—I think it was 87c in recent times. That proves the point that the government has made reckless decisions, engaged in reckless vandalism and spurned foreign investment in our country—in this case by multinational automotive companies—based on a situation that was transitory. Because once the dollar falls below about 92c or 93c, the Australian industry can export. I know this, because Holden will be able to export rear-wheel drive cars to the United States for the police car market and the luxury market. They will be able to make money where the dollar is at the moment. It was a niche capability and it is that capability that gets you around some of the issues of volume which the member for Bradfield raised. The only answer to getting around those volume arguments is to fit in a niche manufacturing place within the global production chains of these automotive industries. And we could have done that, and Holden was interested in doing that.

It is interesting that, for all of the rhetoric and the quotes from previous members, they should remember that on December 10, 2013, Holden's Mike Devereux created the rather unique situation of going public in an article to the Sydney Morning Herald. The headline was: 'It's in the government's hands, says Holden.'

Holden was interested in investing in Australia—and I know this because they bothered to come to see me to talk to me about it and I know something about investment windows. I know something about the opportunity that we had to secure Holden in this country until 2022. That opportunity was there and at least the government for a moment might have realised this, because Ian Macfarlane made a big fuss, came down to the factory, did a big tour and posed in photos with workers. You would have thought that, if the government thought what the member for Bradfield just said, they would not have done that. It was pretty cruel to wander around a factory, giving hope to people, if you did not think the opportunity was there to invest.

Of course the opportunity was there to invest. But it needed a minister and it needed a cabinet. It needed a Prime Minister that was serious about keeping the car industry in this country. It could have been done. The opportunity was there for it to be done. Holden would not have gone through all of the things they went through—going to the workers, doing an enterprise agreement, getting a whole heap of cuts, making a whole lot of sacrifices at the shop-floor level—why would they do that if they did not want to invest in Australia? Why do it?

GM is not there to mollycoddle people. They have closed factories around the world at different times, and when they close factories they are quite clear about it. But they did not do that in this case. They did an agreement with their workers to try and leverage off that investment. All they needed was a government to step up to the table and do what governments around the world do for their car industries. But the thing about this is the government just did not want to.

I have showed this article to the House many times before—the Financial Review article from 11 December: 'Hockey dares GM to leave'—bells the cat. It was the government that made the decision about the car industry. Today, in this bill cutting $500 million out of the Automotive Transformation Scheme, they risk even further accelerating the job losses, accelerating the timetables, and making the situation far worse than it needs to be.

A different article in the Financial Review, also by Phillip Coorey—a very good journalist—is titled, 'Abbott bowls a blistering spell of line and length'. This is where the bragging of the Prime Minister comes in—and there is a quote in there:

'It was Abbott who put the torpedo in the water over Holden,' …

Given all the rhetoric on submarines, given their lies on submarines to South Australia—we know the damage they are going to do to that industry as well—it is an odd bit of language to use.

It was the government in this bill, it was the government last year, who closed the Australian industry, putting 50,000 jobs at risk. They are devastating the manufacturing base of this country. Why? Because of their prejudice. It is not just me who thinks this. In the Financial Review, on 11 February this year, Mr Sardelis, who makes car components in the suburb of Netley, in the member for Hindmarsh's electorate—it is good to see he is not speaking on this bill today; he will be scurrying about, hiding in his office, under his desk—said he was angry at policymakers. He said: 'In the end they did not want an industry and they have got what they wanted.' That is a quote that bells the cat on policymakers like the member for Hindmarsh and others in this government—people who basically put this industry to the knife, put it to the sword. Now, with this $500 million cut, they jeopardise every component company in this country and they jeopardise bringing forward that 2017 date. Make no mistake; that is the consequence of this $500 million cut.

I heard the member for Dawson making a speech. I just about fell off the chair in my office; I could not believe it. Here was a Queenslander railing against subsidies to the car industry and railing against subsidies to the multinationals. But there is just one thing: I remember keeping an article on the member for Dawson, from the Financial Review from the same day, 11 February 2014: 'Nationals fight razor gang over ethanol'. It describes the member for Dawson as 'fighting for ethanol subsidies'. He comes into this House and gets stuck into car workers, car companies and foreign investment, and there is all this emotive language about multinationals, but apparently, if you want to hand over a huge subsidy for ethanol, that is okay; that is just helping everyone out.

If you are going to get up and get stuck into corporate welfare, you need to be consistent. You cannot be against corporate welfare everywhere else other than in your home patch, because no-one will take you seriously. I guess that is where this debate is left, sadly—for all the seriousness of it. It is an industry, put to the sword on the basis of prejudice, on the basis that it is unionised, on the basis that its workers are organised, on the basis that it needs support because other industries are supported around the world, on the basis of the prejudices of the government and the high cost of the Australian dollar. They have decided it is all too hard and they have walked away from it. They pushed Holden away. We have the situation where the member for Dawson makes these ridiculous contributions, and then the member for Bradfield says: 'Oh well, that was inevitable. There was nothing we could do.'

Really, when you get down to it, this government has acted with extraordinary malice to a great Australian industry, an industry that defined us. It certainly defined my electorate, because we were able to build and make cars here—one of only 13 nations in the world—and we did it well. We could export when the dollar came down, when the economic circumstances changed.

But we now have the government becoming a farce. The youngest member of this House ever, the member for Longman, Wyatt Roy, has put a picture of himself on Facebook—I am happy to table it. The picture has him there, with some rather nice looking young ladies, in the party room, with Tony Abbott in the background. He has a V8 Supercars thing in the background. The caption is 'Debating the big issues facing the nation: Ford or Holden?'. This is this government's attitude to the car industry. They put an industry to the sword at the same time that they send thousands of hardworking Australians into the unemployment queues. And they cannot even take it seriously. On the one hand, the Nationals use it for rhetoric; and, on the other hand, the member for Longman uses it for a joke. That is a problem with this government.

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