Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

There is no question that the world automotive industry is suffering a perfect storm, an enormous challenge. The difficulty we have here in Australia now is that this government has added to that challenge. What is unprecedented is what happened in the House this week. Let me take the Senate back to the precise words of Mr Hockey. He invited us to join with the Acting Prime Minister and the government in calling on Holden to—and listen to this language, because this was the day ahead of Holden making its decision:

… come clean with the Australian people …

Remember the government had not even looked at a business plan, if we take what Senator Ronaldson said today. We were invited to:

… call on Holden to come clean with the Australian people about their intentions here.

He said:

We want them to be honest about it—we want them to be fair dinkum …

International companies heard the government refer to how to proceed with the automotive industry and talk about one of its main operators that way. They also understood that the government had not engaged with this company, had not sought to look at its business plan and had been telling automotive companies that they would wait until after this grand Productivity Commission inquiry, yet all of a sudden Mr Hockey was telling Holden to come clean. Of course, they came clean that day. The message went straight to Detroit. The message that went to Detroit—quite inconsistent with the views of the Australian public at large—was that the government will not support an ongoing automotive industry in Australia. That is what the message was.

Even the facts were wrong. Whilst we had senior ministers leaking out of cabinet against their industry minister in an unprecedented fashion, we also had the lies and the spin about the nature of Australian industry assistance to the automotive sector. Let me redress some of that in the time that I have. The Germans invest in the automotive industry $90 for every German, the United States invests $264 for every one of their citizens and the Swedes invest $334 for every Swede. What do we spend? The Australian investment in the car industry is the lowest per capita in the world, with only $17.40 invested for every Australian, and for this government that is too much.

This government does not accept or understand the broader national interest in maintaining a strong and viable automotive industry, quite contrary to the view of former coalition senators who participated in automotive industry inquiries. For instance, I remember Senator Alan Ferguson from South Australia was a strong supporter of the automotive industry. But where are they now? We do not hear from them about the important issues around South Australian and Victorian jobs. We do not hear any serious concern about ensuring that we maintain manufacturing in this important, high-skilled sector. We do not hear that at all.

I sincerely hope that this government will come to the table with some serious assistance for those workers who will need help in finding a new job. Senator Abetz took umbrage today when his comments from the day before relating to the fair entitlements guarantee were said to have a broader impact. I invite Senator Abetz to have a look at the Hansard because he does refer to other matters. The other matters are those important issues of assisting people to transfer from one area of employment to another, to reskill and move to other sectors. Indeed, we are talking about not only the employees of Holden here but potentially the employees of Toyota, who will have difficulties maintaining their operations because they will need supplies from other companies that will not have the scale they need to stay in Australia. We have enormous problems here simply because of this political interference by the Abbott government. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.