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

The loss of Australia's last major motor vehicle producer is a national tragedy. It is an economic and social catastrophe that will be felt for generations. And, of course, all we have seen from the government in response to this suggestion is that there is some bright new day ahead in the future. Like one of those old happy-clappy folk singers from the 1960s, the Prime Minister is out there suggesting that a better day will come sooner or later. There is no plan, no suggestion of a plan and no understanding of the consequences of the government's action.

So we have tens of thousands of high-quality jobs, especially those of blue-collar workers but also those of some of the most creative people working in manufacturing—our scientists, our engineers and our designers—all of whom are now facing the extraordinary anxiety and distress that comes from this kind of situation. We will lose what is now some $700 million that the automotive industry provides by way of its national contribution to our research and development. We will lose an extraordinary array of capabilities in regard to technologies, in skills and in infrastructure. The industry estimates that the death of the automotive industry will slash $7.3 billion from Australia's GDP by 2018; that it will take more than 10 years for the economy to recover and possibly as many as 20 years for manufacturing to recover; and that unemployment levels in the regions most affected will not recover until the end of the 2020s.

So this is a government that has traded-in Australia's automotive industry for a $20 billion welfare bill, and they say they have no regrets. We ought to be shocked at the sheer audacity of this government. In this example of a situation where people are faced with a bleak future, what does this government do? It blames workers; it blames carbon pricing; it blames anyone except the government and its failure to develop an industry policy to meet the needs of Australia.

This is a government that is dominated by those who believe in textbook economics, a textbook view of the way in which the world works. This might be very popular on the north shore of Sydney and in the merchant bankers' suites—bankers, who, of course, enjoy the enormous protections that this government provides to the banking industry—but the government takes the view that we have to turn our back on manufacturing workers.

We of course know the reality. This is a government that, in the last parliament, launched a campaign to slash $500 million from the Automotive Transformation Scheme. It is a decision they had many chances to revisit, but chose not to. This is a government that chose to play chicken with the international automotive industry. They stalled, they delayed, they made snide remarks, they insulted the international investment committees, they bullied General Motors, and they cleared the hurdle which they were seeking: to remove General Motors. I remind senators that on 10 December last year the then Acting Prime Minister, Warren Truss, wrote to General Motors demanding that it make an immediate statement about the future of its Australian plants. That was before the company here had even heard the outcome of the government's much vaunted process around the Productivity Commission. That was before the formal process as to whether or not the government would provide any future support had been concluded. GM's managing director, Mike Devereux, had told the commission on Tuesday of that week that the company had made no decision about its future in Australia and that the company was waiting to hear whether the coalition would offer long-term support. Mr Devereux reminded us then that the cost to Australia of losing the car industry would dwarf the cost to the budget in saving it. We know that Mr Hockey waltzed into the House of Representatives and demanded an answer from General Motors. He got one the next day.

We know the reality of what this government has been about: the ideological obsession of the hard right wing of the Liberal Party, which took the view that there is some legitimate expenditure when it comes to industry assistance—for instance, in oil and gas and in livestock. We actually spend more money on sheep and goats than we do on the automotive industry. But this government took the view that support for the automotive industry was somehow or other immoral. Their unrelenting hostility has produced the result they sought: the destruction of the automotive industry, the destruction of the jobs in the automotive industry and the destruction of the capacity of this country to develop highly advanced, elaborately transformed manufactured goods.

They have tried to present the view that the automotive industry is Old World. They do not recognise that the average car today has some 250 microprocessors on board. Over 30,000 parts have to be delivered on time in exactly the right order, every time. They do not acknowledge the importance of the automotive industry to so many other industries in this country—to steel, to aluminium, to plastics, to electronics, to robotics—all of which have a tremendous impact on other manufacturing industries. They do not acknowledge any of that. All we see from this government is the statement from the Prime Minister on 14 December that there would be no support for Toyota. In fact, we have heard from the Prime Minister the suggestion that there was nothing they could have done. The reality is very different. This government sent a clear, unrelenting message of hostility to Japan, as they did to Detroit. At a time when we know the investment decisions which could have secured billions of dollars worth of new investment, new jobs and new technologies for this country were being made, this government said they were not interested in providing assistance. They have traded on the welfare and the prosperity of tens of thousands of Australian workers. They have shipped offshore the great export industry of this government—they are exporting jobs—because they refuse to acknowledge the economic realities of how decisions are actually made when it comes to investment.

Isn't it ironic that it is the Labor Party that has to make the appeal for international investment in Australia and that it is the hard Right of the Liberal Party that says, 'We're not interested. Unless it is Cadburys or a fishing company in Hobart that is in a marginal seat, we're going to draw a line in the sand and we're going to say that we're not interested in the welfare of Australian workers. We're going to make Australian jobs the biggest export industry of all.'

This is a government that will not face up to the reality that for every dollar invested by the Commonwealth in the automotive industry that industry was spending $20, in Toyota's case, and $35, on the advice of General Motors. Last year alone, $1.5 billion was spent by Toyota on its suppliers across Australia. How are you going to replace that? Where are the jobs going to come from to replace that? Where is the investment? Where are we going to see the economic activity? (Time expired)