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

If anyone needs a demonstration of the abject poverty of the coalition's position on manufacturing, they only need read Senator Edwards's contribution. This government has presided over the death of a $21.5 billion industry, and we get that sort of nonsense and rubbish as a contribution by Senator Edwards. I do not think he has done his party any service, he certainly has not done the Senate any service, and he is doing the people of Australia absolutely no service at all.

We are talking about an industry which employs up to 50,000 highly skilled workers. That means 50,000 highly skilled jobs are set to go from Victoria, and all you can do is talk about some nonsensical local political stuff. You have no understanding—as the coalition has no understanding—of the policy settings required to save an industry. There are 2,900 Holden workers in Victoria and South Australia, and they are set to lose their jobs in 2017. From Toyota in Victoria 3,500 jobs will go in 2017. Ford will be sacking an additional 300 workers soon, two years ahead of its decision to close completely in 2016. In total 1,200 jobs will go at Ford.

But the even bigger costs are in the supply chain. Each car produced in Australia has around 30,000 parts. Car manufacturers spend $2.5 billion every year with Victorian suppliers alone, and those companies together employ 18,000 full-time workers. It is estimated that, Australia-wide, 30,000 people supplying parts and components in the car industry will be impacted by the decisions to close. But the impact will be even greater than this. Allen Consulting Group, using economic analysis from Monash University, found that if Australia lost its car manufacturing, which we are now set to do, Australia's GDP would be $7.3 billion smaller by 2018. Furthermore:

Employment losses in Melbourne would equate to some 33,000 jobs in 2018, and around 6,600 in Adelaide.

… employment levels would not return until around 2027 for Melbourne and 2025 for Adelaide.

These are catastrophic figures. Yet when it is put to the government, 'Why didn't you act quicker?' they come back with this response: 'The decisions were already made. There was nothing we could do.' But that shows great ignorance about what is necessary to assist with long-term planning and to get the policy settings right for the automotive industry.

The coalition in the lead-up to the last election and through the election campaign announced that they were going to cut $500 million from car assistance over a long period, and these threats must have sent shudders through the boardrooms of Ford, Toyota and Holden. These threats, and the goading by Mr Hockey of GMH to get up and leave the country, must have had a major impact. Then there is the fact that the coalition tried to explain to us that Toyota was not under threat, because it had a different business model: that, on the whole, its cars were being exported. But again the coalition in its ignorance failed to understand that, once a critical mass in the car supplying, technology and R&D industries is lost, you make it unviable for companies to continue. It is so disappointing that the government failed to understand this and then came back and said, 'We didn't know; there was nothing we could have done anyway.'

At this very moment there is a delegation of shipbuilders in this building. The shipbuilding industry is also under enormous pressure, and the delegation has sought meetings with the Prime Minister, Mr Abbott; the Treasurer, Joe Hockey; the Minister for Industry, Ian Macfarlane; the Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb; and the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann. Not one of these ministers has yet agreed to meet with the delegation. Some have blatantly refused, and some have simply ignored the request. So when they say, 'We didn't know; what is it we could have done?' they rejoice in their ignorance. They do not want to know. They do not meet with people who have information from the coalface, and that means that they can be happy in their ignorance when things go bad. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.