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

He does need to stop interjecting. He has had his question. In terms of the dollar, an industry that involves itself in the export market deals with fluctuations in the dollar. During my time as minister I have seen the dollar as low as 48c and, as the member said, almost touching $1.20. The decision by General Motors in Detroit is a decision that was made by them without consultation with the government, and it was based on their own facts. I am not privy to the facts which they based their decision on. I am privy to the public statements made by General Motors in relation to the fact that nothing they could have asked this government to do would have changed that decision. It was a decision which, obviously, General Motors had made their mind up to make. They made their decision. This government responded to that decision and the subsequent decision. I know it was extraordinarily difficult for Toyota to cease production in Australia. Australia was the first country in which Toyota built an overseas assembly line. I have visited the Toyota plant in Altona, and the member for Wakefield and I visited the plant in Adelaide, and I know that the workers at both those plants took enormous pride in the vehicles they were producing—and can I say: they are fantastic vehicles.

The unfortunate reality is that as the market in Australia changed, and as the market tastes of consumers in Australia changed, there simply was not the demand for the vehicles being produced by GMH in Adelaide. We have seen those numbers trending down for a long time, and currency fluctuations may or may not have influenced the decision by GM, but the reality is that we are at a point in Australia where only around one in 10 Australians purchase cars that were built here.

We have reacted to the decision by GM and the subsequent decision by Toyota's parent in Japan by putting in place the industry growth fund and by working with governments of both persuasions in both Victoria and South Australia to ensure that we do everything we can to allow the component industries, in particular, in the car industry to transition to new manufacture. I had the opportunity last week in Adelaide to visit a company called Precision Engineering that is diversifying into the solar industry—not just diversifying into the solar industry but actually doing it using Australian technology developed by that extraordinarily eminent organisation, CSIRO.

That technology is being exported into Japan. So we are seeing the transition of component companies to other areas. We are also making money available to retrain workers who will be made redundant by the end of the auto industry and give them the opportunity to take up jobs in new areas. As well as that, we are encouraging companies to come and invest. We have been overwhelmed with the response to that. We have seen very significant applications in that regard. We continue to assist the industry through the ATS. As I said to the member on the last question, we have made a very significant increase in terms of the money available: over $680 million.

See this speech in context