Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The news earlier this year that Mitsubishi had ceased manufacturing in Australia was not unexpected, but it was still a devastating blow for its workers and an unwanted decision for South Australia and the nation. In my state of South Australia we have a proud history of automotive manufacturing, extending back more than 100 years, so it is appropriate to acknowledge some of the history and the people who helped to create it.

In 1897, at Mannum, on the Murray River in South Australia, David Shearer built one of the first motor vehicles ever manufactured in Australia—a steam powered vehicle. There are records of the vehicle being driven on the roads around Mannum, much to the delight of the locals, who were more used to horse powered transport. While that vehicle was a one-off, and Shearer did not produce, build or manufacture any more passenger vehicles, it is indicative of the innovation that characterises manufacturing in my home state. Shearer went on to found a very successful business manufacturing agricultural machinery.

From the late 1890s, more passenger vehicles started to appear in Australia, and steam gave way to petrol engines. Some local pioneers, such as Harley Tarrant, of Melbourne, made and built their own models. However, most vehicles produced in Australia were made from imported chassis and engines and a locally made body. That was how Edward Wheeldon Holden started out. In the beginning, Holden and others in the industry were producing a small number of cars each year, but with the advent of World War I they began to produce many more. By 1924, Holden had built a new facility at Woodville, in South Australia, to cope with the demand for Holden car bodies. At the time, the Woodville plant was considered to be the most modern production line in Australia. Holden built a new plant at Elizabeth, to the north of Adelaide, in 1965. This year, we have celebrated 50 years of car making at Elizabeth. The occasion was marked by the burial of a time capsule, and a tribute to the workers and locals who have been part of Holden’s success.

In 1964, the automotive industry became even more important to the South Australian economy when Chrysler completed a new plant at Tonsley Park, in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, and commenced production and assembly of vehicles. A year later, the name ‘Mitsubishi’ first became known to the Australian motoring public with the import of the first Mitsubishi Colts. In 1966, Chrysler commissioned the building of an engine plant at Lonsdale, in South Australia. That plant, built on what was then the very outer fringes of the Adelaide urban area, and the associated business that provided components and services to the plant, provided an employment and economic base which facilitated the expansion of Adelaide’s southern suburbs.

By 1980, Mitsubishi Australia and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation of Japan had realised Chrysler’s potential and acquired their Australian operations. Mitsubishi had already taken a significant stake in Chrysler’s Australian operations in 1968. The Chrysler name was replaced in the Australian market by the Mitsubishi name. With the takeover of Chrysler went some iconic brand names, including the Valiant and the V8 Chrysler Charger. Both the Charger and the even more famous Holden Monaro are remembered fondly by Australians of my vintage. Those famous marques were built at Tonsley Park and Elizabeth respectively.

In 2002, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, the parent company of Mitsubishi Australia, asked the federal government and the South Australian government to contribute $85 million to the Australian company in an attempt to secure the company’s future in Australia. When this payment was made by the governments, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation announced a $1 billion expansion and product development program for the Australian company, which was to be funded by Mitsubishi Australia and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation of Japan.

In 2003, Mitsubishi committed $270 million for a research and development centre, which included $10 million for a test track and $40 million for a press facility at Tonsley Park as part of its investment program. Unfortunately, no amount of investment could put a stop to the increasing price of fuel, the appreciation of the Australian dollar, the increase in the manufacturing of vehicles in Asia and their importation into Australia and the growing consumer preference for small cars in Australia and abroad.

Sales declined and Mitsubishi’s Lonsdale plant closed in October 2005 after 38 years of manufacturing. During that time almost two million engines as well as more than six million heads, blocks and other components were made for export at the plant. And now, after 44 years, the Tonsley Park site is no longer home to a car manufacturing plant. It is estimated that approximately 1.1 million vehicles came off the production line at Tonsley Park. At the peak of its operation, Mitsubishi employed 4,800 South Australians there. The decision by Mitsubishi Motors Corporation to close Tonsley has resulted in approximately 930 direct job losses, with 500 Mitsubishi workers already made redundant and another 430 workers to leave over the next twelve months.

The closure of the plant in Adelaide should be considered by government and the industry, with a view to ensuring that another plant does not close and that our remaining automotive industry stays strong and our exports increase. I am pleased to note that the government is undertaking a comprehensive review of the automotive industry and has committed $500 million towards a green car investment fund. Our aim is to create an Australian vehicle and components sector that is sustainable in all senses—economic, social and environmental. Labor’s initiative will assist the industry to boost production, employment, exports and skills by harnessing the creativity that remains within the industry. This is an industry that still employs, directly and indirectly, some 70,000 Australians and generates high-value exports worth in the order of $5 billion each year.

The issue of direct government support for private sector businesses is controversial, and there is no denying that federal and state government support has at times been necessary to sustain vehicle manufacturing in Australia. However, industry supported by direct government funding is not a sustainable model, and even the industry itself recognises this.

After being advised by Mitsubishi’s president and the company’s Australian CEO that there was nothing either the state or federal government could do to affect the decision by Mitsubishi Motors Corporation to cease manufacturing in Australia, government attention turned to the wellbeing of the employees who were going to lose their jobs and their livelihoods.

A package of support for Mitsubishi workers was agreed between the federal and South Australian governments and the company. The package of $35 million of Commonwealth funding, $10 million of state funding and $5 million from the corporation will help those 930 workers move into new jobs and establish an industry development package for Adelaide’s southern suburbs. The transition and industry package is modelled on the successful arrangements the South Australian government put in place when the Lonsdale engine plant shut in 2004. I was pleased to find that, of the workers who were at the Lonsdale plant, 84 per cent found employment through that package. Hopefully the same will apply to the workers who are going to lose their jobs as a result of the closure of the Tonsley plant.

The Mitsubishi workers were members of their respective trade unions, by and large. That enabled them to negotiate good redundancy packages—packages that set the benchmark for redundancies in similar industries. However, no matter how good the redundancy package is, it cannot compensate for the loss of a job. It cannot compensate for the friendships that people built at the workplace in Mitsubishi or for the sense of community that one felt whenever one went to the Tonsley Park site in particular, where some workers had been working since the first day of the Chrysler Corporation setting up in Adelaide. They were an extremely dedicated and loyal workforce who took enormous pride in the vehicles they made. They deserve our acknowledgement and our thanks for the contribution to the South Australian economy and to the wellbeing of the South Australian people.