Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs (Senator Ronaldson) to questions without notice asked today.

After 65 years in Australia, with a long and proud history of building the cars that Australian families drive, Holden is reduced to just one friend at the cabinet table. But it is not just Holden that has been abandoned by those in cabinet opposite; the government has abandoned tens of thousands of families in Victoria and South Australia who rely on the automotive industry for the livelihoods, to pay their mortgages and to buy their weekly groceries. Mr Greg Hunt, Mr Kevin Andrews, Mr Bruce Billson and Mr Andrew Robb, all from my state of Victoria and all in the cabinet, have all abandoned the automotive sector in Victoria. You could at least have expected Mr Christopher Pyne, the only South Australian in cabinet, to strongly support the industry that means so much to his state, but no. In amongst the looting of $1.2 billion of taxpayers' funds to bail Mr Pyne out of his debacle last week, he turned on South Australian families who are supported by work in the automotive sector. He could find a billion dollars to save his own skin, but he could not find an extra cent to keep families paying their mortgages. The lone voice in cabinet supporting the automotive industry and the jobs and families that it represents was Minister Macfarlane.

But worse than simply abandoning Holden has been the decision taken by a significant number of cabinet ministers to background journalists and leak against the Minister for Industry and against Holden, its workforce and the families that it supports. This is, frankly, a stunning state of affairs. We have a minister who is trying to support a company that employs thousands of Australians being publicly trashed by his own cabinet colleagues. This type of destructive backgrounding is entirely unprecedented.

But what is most galling is that the workers being trashed by coalition cabinet ministers are among the most productive in Australia. Research in yesterday's Guardian Australia shows that labour productivity in the machine- and equipment-manufacturing sector has grown strongly and consistently for the last two decades. Australian automotive manufacturing workers are productive, hardworking and highly skilled. Holden boss Mike Devereux is reported to have told the Productivity Commission again today that workers and unions in the automotive industry continue to work closely with management to drive productivity, and all this is happening while senior coalition ministers are cheerily digging a grave for this Australian icon.

There are many small and medium businesses in my home state of Victoria that will suffer if the government withdraws support for the automotive industry. Here are just some of those companies, and the families who work for them will be directly impacted: Australian Arrow in Carrum Downs, Diver Consolidated Industries in Reservoir, Katcon in Keysborough, Venture DMG in Keysborough, Multifoam in Dandenong South and Staetite Fasteners in Heidelberg West. Those opposite, particularly those 18 cabinet ministers who have turned their backs on the industry and sold out those workers, should hang their heads in shame. Once again this government is proving that it is not— (Time expired)