Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I should start by saying how disappointed I was in Senator Ryan's contribution to the debate on this urgency motion on the automotive industry. He had 10 minutes to tell us what the government might have planned for the car industry and supporting that industry, but he just went on a rant for 10 minutes about how our position was wrong, how it was the fault of the car industry itself and how we should not be supporting subsidies, and he talked about bottomless pits, which was simply a nonsense argument. The thing we do know and should understand very clearly is that, for every dollar of government investment in this industry, the economy gets an $18 return. That is a great return on anyone's measure, and it is an important return back into the economy because it supports jobs. It supports skills. It supports businesses. That is what, unfortunately, the coalition is walking away from.

I am not surprised Senator Ryan did not have much to say about the government's plan; what we have seen over the last week or so are government ministers—who have quoted anonymously in the paper but who identify themselves as government ministers—leaking against the car industry. They are doing that to undermine the car industry. They do that because they know their government has no plans to continue to support this industry, support the investment, support jobs in our economy and support those businesses that rely on the vehicle industry as well. They do that because they want to create a public view that the car industry is over, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a very dishonest strategy. It is one that betrays everybody who works in the vehicle industry and those businesses that rely on it. I am very disappointed.

The car industry is a big employer, but it is not just about those jobs that are directly in the car industry. The car industry creates a critical mass in a whole range of skills, enterprises and innovations. There are many companies that began work as component suppliers in the vehicle industry and have now built their businesses, diversified, used the technology and skills they have learnt—a lot of research and development they have taken directly from the vehicle industry—and expanded into other things. Many of those businesses would not be in existence today if it were not for the co-contribution and partnership they had with the vehicle industry at that time. And that will continue to happen; it continues to happen now. Lots of components manufacturers partially supply the vehicle industry but rely on the critical mass of vehicle industry orders to keep their businesses afloat and to enable them to supply areas of our manufacturing industry.

So it is not just about those jobs, although we say they are crucially important and we absolutely want to defend them. It is also about the skills transfer. The vehicle industry is at the forefront of lots of different technologies. Look at the way cars have developed and the quality of vehicles that are built today, the componentry that is being placed in vehicles; some of these things were unheard of 10 years ago. We have automatic parking technology. We have all those things that used to be enormous add-on extras and are now standard components in most vehicles. We have all sorts of safety technology built into all cars that we are building now. So they are at the forefront of that research and development. Most of that in this industry, especially in Holden, happens here. We create this skill base of engineers, researchers and designers who do not always continue to work purely for the vehicle industry. That creates a skill mass which other industries then call upon. It gives people opportunities to go open up new businesses using those skills they have learnt with those technologies.

You only have to look at the trades areas. The vehicle industry is a huge user of robotics. Some of the robotics in these vehicle industries are at the leading edge of technology. If you are thinking of building a business here that is going to involve robotics, you do not do it if there are no skills or experience in robotics available at all. What the vehicle industry does not only in robotics—it is just one of many examples—is create that skill base for our economy, that skill base for other businesses to draw upon, that skill base that allows innovation and enterprise to flourish in our economy.

That is what we are about. We are about keeping those skill bases. This is part of not only the $18 returned to the economy for every dollar invested but also that skills investment and return. They are big employers of high-skilled workers. It is not just tradespeople and engineers. Look at process workers. Unfortunately, the people on the other side have no idea how they work. These are high-skill jobs. The quality control mechanisms and the skills those people learn through quality assurance in those companies are enormous. There are enormous amounts of training, and these people have these skills which make them incredibly valuable employees for other industries, whether they are start-up companies or others who may not be in the position to train workers from scratch. They are able to call on the workers that have been trained and invested in by the vehicle industry. That is human investment. That is skills investment. That is something this country desperately needs. If we are going to watch a major employer, a high-skill trainer, a high-tech industry leave this country and that investment, those skills will be lost to this country. We will not have the capacity to move forward. It will have wide-ranging consequences outside of the vehicle industry and its component manufacturers themselves.

That is what the economists in windowless rooms in Canberra fail to see. They want to just look at pieces of paper for returns and what a pure economy should do. We in this place are here to do what is in the public interest. If we wanted to hand the running of the economy, our public interest and the government, that is what the government should say. They should admit that that is what they are going to do. But we on this side believe that our society is bigger than that. Our society needs to have jobs. It needs to have good jobs. It needs to have high-skill jobs. We need to ensure that the economy has those skills being trained now by the vehicle industry. We need to ensure that those businesses have the opportunity, if they want to start up something new, to call on those skills. The vehicle industry is large and provides the critical mass of skills training for much of the rest of the manufacturing industry, so from our point of view this is absolutely crucial.

We have the vehicle industry, so it is not only about the jobs that will be lost but also about the hit that will be taken by the economy if a company like GM walks away. It will take us 20 years to recover from that hit to the economy. Some estimates are around a $20 billion hit to the Victorian economy straightaway.

You only have to listen to those of the government's political persuasion in Victoria. The Victorian Liberal government are absolutely determined to support the vehicle industry. Why? Because they are much closer to working people than this federal Liberal government could ever dream of being. So they support the co-investment. They understand the impact to the Victorian economy. They know that it will drive my state of Victoria into a recession. They do not want that, and that is one tick in their favour. But they will not stand up to their big brothers and sisters here in Canberra, and that is a bitter disappointment because they do not have the courage to do so. They say all the right things, but when it comes to walking into Mr Abbott's office, thumping the table and seriously arguing the case for Victoria they have gone missing.

So it is only Labor governments that will do that and it is only the Labor Party that will defend this industry. We want to defend those jobs. They are good jobs. They are important jobs. We need not only jobs for workers now but a viable industry to provide jobs for our kids as well. As I argued earlier, it is not just direct employment in the vehicle industry; it is all those flow-on service industries that follow. It is the support industries. It is the industries that began in the vehicle industry or the component industry and have grown into bigger and better things. It is the driving of technology and innovation in plastics, in textiles, in metalwork, in electronics and in all sorts of areas where the spin-off from that R&D enables other businesses to grow. It is one of the cornerstones of our manufacturing industry, and it would be an absolute disgrace for this present government simply to sit on their hands, do nothing and walk away as Senator Ryan has suggested.