Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It certainly is rubbish to suggest that workers do not deserve good jobs but unfortunately you do not get good jobs in bad industries that are not going to survive or can only survive while being propped up by the government. I would have thought an unsustainable job was worse than no job at all. This government is very concerned about doing what it can to assist workers who, over the next three years, will lose their jobs in the automotive industry and in the downstream areas of the automotive industry. However, it is laughable for the opposition to suggest that this is our fault or our problem. As they so often illogically do—and it is cruel to the workers who they allege they represent—they are misrepresenting the truth and misrepresenting the real situation. Under Labor, the last government this country had, one manufacturing job was lost every 19 minutes.

I would like to refer to a couple of examples of the previous government's automotive industry policy. In 2012, Ms Gillard announced that the government would give $34 million to Ford, saying that it would create 300 new jobs. Within eight months, 330 employees had lost their jobs at Ford. Ms Gillard announced a $215 million assistance package for Holden, saying that that would secure its future in Australia until 2022. Last time I checked, we were not up to 2022. Yet, within six months of Ms Gillard's announcement, 670 jobs were gone. Then, of course, part of their brilliant industry policy strategy was to hit the car industry with a $1.8 billion fringe benefits tax slug, just when it looked as though the industry might actually take advantage of some of the money that the then government had thrown at them. There was no logical reason to do that. There is no logical reason to do anything other than what this government is doing to maintain and build manufacturing in Australia. We are going to improve the manufacturing industry across the board in Australia, not just for the big firms that happen to have senior union reps who can go a-whining to the opposition. We are going to do it by getting taxes down, getting rid of rid of regulation and getting productivity up.

Twenty years ago, I could have stood here and said, 'I, as a national manufacturer …' I cannot say that anymore because our family business, which is almost 90 years old, is now a manufacturer, importer and distributor. The reasons that we had to go down that path are exactly the same reasons that industry is hurting right across the board in Australia: you have to adapt, change and learn to function within the environment you have, not listen to the untruths and exaggerated nonsense from the opposition suggesting that somehow the car industry could have been maintained as it was. It could not be maintained as it was. That is very, very basic. You just have to look at some of the figures that come from the Productivity Commission, for example. In June 2012, the effective assistance rate was about four per cent for manufacturing and about three per cent for agriculture; but, for motor vehicles, it was nine per cent—an effective assistance rate of nine per cent, an unsustainable rate that was going up, not down, under the stewardship of the people who allegedly care about jobs. Those jobs could not continue to exist. Sustainability does not exist in an industry where the government help rate is nine per cent.

We will make a sustainable industry possible. We will assist the firms to have a broad-based economic approach through good regulatory reform and by getting rid of some of the impediments to workplace flexibility. (Time expired)