Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

The senator is actually quite right. The opposition, as it was as the time, was given extraordinarily full detail about the business case that General Motors had, but took no action to deal with it. The opposition at the time knew that they could have fixed this problem for less than $150 million a year. Now we are going to have to spend billions and billions of dollars to repair the damage that has been created by the extraordinarily ruthless and reckless attitude that this government has taken to one of the most important industries in manufacturing in this country.

We heard extraordinary statements being made by the Deputy Prime Minister, who was the Acting Prime Minister at the time, demanding an immediate answer from General Motors, despite the fact that the Minister for Industry had actually asked them to delay a decision. Nonetheless, upon hearing the decision of General Motors, we had the industry minister expressing most audaciously that he was disappointed that Holden hadn't given the Australian government time to complete the process—after there was an answer demanded of them by the Acting Prime Minister. He said he was floored. What an extraordinary proposition! It was a deliberate and destructive campaign launched by senior members of this government, who were backgrounding journalists and our media organisations for seven days straight, and they were demanding the company leave the country. The Treasurer said, 'You're either here or you're not.'

We know what happened. There was a text message sent to Detroit and there was a direct line feed to Detroit on question time yesterday. That is what happened. (Time expired)