George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The withdrawal of Holden from manufacturing is a tragic thing, particularly for the families of those employed directly by Holden. Holden's withdrawal signals the end of auto manufacturing in Australia, which is also a tragic loss for those employed across the wider industry who might lose their jobs as a result.

It is a blow to diehard Holden fans across the country, my father being one of them—he was a professional dragcar racer for a period of time and raced a HQ Monaro as part of the then Wild Bunch. My first car was a Holden Commodore, and the family is not happy at all that I now drive a Ford Territory. We all love Holden as an Aussie institution, and the loyalty of Holden fans is matched only by the loyalty of Ford fans.

But the reality is that neither Holden nor Ford had that loyalty to Australia. I will leave it up to others to score the political points over Holden's departure. We could talk about Ford's departure under the Gillard government. The reality is that they were all pulling out of Australia under both sides of politics regardless of what shade of government it was. Frankly, it did not matter who was in government or how much money was thrown at them; their intention was always to leave Australia and to go wherever cars could be produced cheaper. That is a problem of globalisation.

The Liberals are firmly committed to free trade, and Labor is on the same line. No doubt free trade does bring some benefits to industry—certainly it does to agriculture, I will acknowledge—but free trade is also a reckoning and falls hard on manufacturing. Australian workers earn decent wages and, when we pit them against workers in a third-world country who may get $2 a day in some cases if they are lucky, how can we compete? I think the horses have already bolted on this issue not just in the auto industry but right across the manufacturing sector.

And it is not just manufacturing in Australia; this is a problem for developed countries around the world wherever workers are paid a decent wage. The US has seen industrial ruination across their country in places like Detroit, Michigan, and Ohio for the same reason: it is cheaper for large companies to manufacture in second- and third-world countries. A recent Los Angeles Times article told the story of an Ohio resident, Chris Wade, who worked for parts manufacturer Delphi Automotive before Delphi moved operations from the US to Mexico. He was paid $30, a far cry from the $1 an hour paid to Berta Alicia Lopez, who lives on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico and performs the same job that Wade once did in Ohio.

Globalisation and free trade, we are told, lift the wages of people in poor countries, but Mexico and America are a perfect example: despite the pain in America, Mexican wages have not improved. That blue-collar pain felt across middle America drove millions of voters to Donald Trump at the 2016 election. At a campaign rally, President Trump said:

Every time I see a Delphi and I see companies leaving, that wall gets a little bit higher, and keeps going up. We are going to fight Delphi and other companies and say, 'Don't leave us, because there are going to be consequences.'

Maybe that is the only way here in Australia we can stop it happening: to stand up against these multinational companies and stand up for our working families.

When Holden first announced they were deserting Australia, I said to them and all the other auto manufacturers that we should demand back all the money that we have paid them instead of falling over one another to see how much more money we could throw at them in the forlorn hope that we would keep them here. We should have passed legislation to recover the billions of dollars that had already been given to them. We should be putting a massive tax on them to recoup the money that we gave them. Perhaps these companies need to feel a big stick every so often.

Whatever the answer might be, it does not involve handing out free money. We tried that, and it just did not work. It did not work under Labor when Ford left. It did not work under us when Holden left. The answer is a different style of leadership: standing up to multinational companies that seek the lowest common denominator for production costs. Perhaps we need to tell these multinationals that, if they want to sell in Australia, they need to manufacture in Australia. When free trade was first championed, it was on the back of so-called 'production efficiency', but that has now gone out the window with the increase in technology and also with the low cost of international shipping. No country has a production efficiency. Now it comes down to the lowest common denominator in wages.

The question does come back, sadly, to Australian consumers, who demand cheap little cars that come out of Thailand and Korea. I do not know the answer to the question of whose fault it ultimately is, but I have to say we Australians do need to start being loyal to Australian products and to Australian companies that support Australia and Australian workers.

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