Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Carr. A globally competitive car-manufacturing sector is clearly important to the Australian economy and to jobs. The Howard government invested $3.8 billion in the sector over the six years from 2001 to 2007 to ensure just that. But yesterday’s ‘Rudd rescue’ was bereft of detail as to how it will ensure a globally competitive car-manufacturing industry—an industry that will increase its own investment in the industry in Australia and stand on its own two feet to deliver world-standard cars and provide jobs for Australians.

How will the ‘Rudd rescue’ guarantee that? Minister Carr and the Prime Minister will not guarantee it because they know they cannot. ‘Rudd’s rescue’ is not an evidence based plan, despite the Prime Minister’s promises to the Australian electorate to deliver just that; it is an ill-camouflaged appeasement of Labor’s union mates. It has been dressed up as a response to climate change and to the global financial crisis—a global financial crisis that Prime Minister Rudd says means that year 2009 will get a bit rough. Well, it is a rough response to the rough year into which we are heading. It is a rough response and a rough rescue with no empirics, no evidence and little information. It seeks refuge in the refrains of climate change and the global financial crisis in an attempt to silence the critics of ‘Rudd’s rescue’, and we saw in question time a valid basis for this criticism.

The minister refused to answer a question from your good self, Mr Deputy President Ferguson, about whether the Rudd rescue package will save jobs in the sector. Instead we heard Senator Carr say that the Rudd government does not make promises it cannot keep. What a concession, what an admission. The Rudd rescue package will not save jobs in this sector—and tragically so. The Rudd government knows it to be so. But worse than that was Minister Carr’s answer to a further question from your good self, Mr Deputy President, about how many jobs will be lost in the sector. If jobs are not to be lost, why does the Rudd rescue package set aside some $34 million for a car worker redundancy scheme, and on what basis has that package been calculated?

In question time the government failed to provide empirical evidence to underpin the Rudd rescue package. The minister said that, since the escalation of the global financial crisis on 15 September this year and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, he has not personally spoken to the US heads of Ford or General Motors about the capacity or willingness of those companies to invest in Australia’s car manufacturing sector on a three to one basis. So how can the government claim that the Rudd rescue package will deliver increased investment by the industry in the industry itself in Australia? They simply cannot. The minister says instead that, despite his not having spoken personally to the heads of those two companies since 15 September, there have been discussions with the corporate leadership of those companies. So what, then, are the guarantees that have been delivered by those companies on investment in Australia’s car manufacturing sector? On that question, the minister says that the companies have written to the government. Well, Minister, release that written correspondence to the Australian public. The government must release the letters which the minister himself admits have been written by Ford and GM in respect of this issue. If the government refuses to do so then we will continue to see a Rudd rescue plan which is no better than a rough plan to deal with a rough year ahead.

Question agreed to.