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

If I have my figures right, we're coming up to the four-year anniversary of the Abbott-Turnbull government—

An opposition member: Shame!

A government member: Four years too short!

An opposition member: Joyce.

Abbott-Turnbull-Joyce. My colleague across the chamber says, 'Four years too short.' For my community it's four years too long. I can remember pretty vividly just after that election, on 3 October 2013, the then industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, having me, Nick Xenophon, and the then member for Hindmarsh, Matt Williams—and I think a couple of Liberal senators came along—for a tour of the Holden Elizabeth plant. I can remember Minister Macfarlane posing with one of the tradies there, with a ballpein hammer, for the media. He was well received by the workforce at that time because he was giving them hope that they might receive a fair hearing from this government.

What we know is that sometime later, in December, there was the infamous headline 'Hockey dares GM to leave'. Of course, we know what happened with this government thumbing its nose in their face. GM took $1 billion worth of investment elsewhere, and, tragically, we're going to see later, on 20 October of this year, the closure of the Holden Elizabeth plant—a great plant. It's one of the few plants in the world, in the GM family, that can take different cars down the line—a sedan, a station wagon, a ute, a Caprice and, before that, a Cruze.

Last week, we went on a tour of that plant again with a lot of state Labor MPs and the shadow federal industry minister, Kim Carr, but not one Liberal Party MP and not one minor party MP. It was just Labor MPs touring that plant for the last time. The thing that makes me most proud is that, for those workers, that factory is the top factory in the world for quality in the GM family. Those workers are going out with their heads held high and with the factory as absolutely No. 1 for quality in the GM world. They are fighting the good fight by making the best Australian cars they can right up to the very end. They deserve a government that pays them due respect, that actually shows up, not just for the good times but for the bad, and that explains its policy. Labor will forever regret the decision made by the Abbott-Turnbull government to close Holden.