Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion and also to say that 20 October this year will be a very sad day for South Australians and all Australians when the closure of Holden's Elizabeth plant in Adelaide's northern suburbs takes place. It will be a terrible blow to South Australia, to the economy and to the expertise of manufacturing in Australia. The plant at Elizabeth has successfully been building cars since 1963, but of course Holden has been in Australia for many years. It was started off as a saddlery business by James Alexander Holden in 1856, and in 1924 the company became the exclusive supplier for manufacturing the US GMH motor vehicles.

Many thousands of people have put bread and butter on the table as blue-collar workers at GMH in South Australia, Victoria and other places. One of those families was my family. My father migrated to Australian in 1954, and the day after he landed in Melbourne he got his first job, at GMH at Fishermans Bend or Port Melbourne, and stayed there for many years before transferring to the Woodville plant in South Australia.

Just like our family benefited from a decent wage for a decent week's work, the families of millions of other people did the same—migrant families, families that had been here for many generations—and it assisted Australia's economy. It assisted our manufacturing, it assisted the techniques and technology and a whole range of other things. It will be a very sad day to see Holden close its doors. Many of us have grown up with that name. My first car, when I was 16 or 17, was a 1962 EK Holden, and I always had Holdens—mainly because my father worked there and they provided a wage for our family so I wanted to support them, just as many other thousands of Australians did.

Earlier we heard the member for Wakefield talk about the benefits in dollar terms and how much it cost governments to support Holden staying here. We heard that $1.8 billion was the cost, with a $1.4 billion return. But then you add the taxation, you add the spinoff enterprises, businesses that all supplied Holden; you add the small delicatessens and snack bars down the road that would shoot up because of the manufacturing population around there. You can see what a great loss this will be to Australia. Countries all around the world subsidise car manufacturing. Wherever there is an assembly plant there is a subsidy per worker. Research that has been done in Germany and in the US shows that our subsidy was one of the lowest per worker, per assembly line, compared to other nations around the world.

Why do nations provide these subsidies? Because they know of the value adding that each assembly line job gives to the economy. They know that for each assembly line job there is a tenfold spinoff into the economy. Therefore it was our duty as members of parliament, as governments, to do everything we possibly could to keep Holden operating and running. I was not in this place when then Treasurer Hockey dared GMH to leave. A year earlier Mr Devereux, who was the CEO of Holden in Australia, made a statement saying how precarious their position was and how the subsidies would assist them to maintain manufacturing, and any tinkering with the subsidies would mean that they would have to shut their doors. Then we heard the negative spin from member after member, and from ministers—it was like a race to who could be most negative about Holden. The front page of the papers had Mr Hockey daring GMH to leave, and within a few days we had the very sad and unfortunate message from Mr Devereux saying that they were going to shut their doors in 2017.

Holden have provided jobs for thousands of people—in fact, economic modelling estimates that overall economic losses to the state will be in the vicinity of $4 billion, with job losses of up to 65,000 by 2020. It will be a very sad day when they close and I am very disappointed that people in this place did not do everything they possibly could to keep Holden going.

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