Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this matter of public importance debate. I listened intently to Senator Birmingham's contribution and I did not get any great sense of empathy for the workers and their families. I wonder what Thomas Playford—that icon of the Liberal Party after which the city of Playford is named—would think if he were to hear that contribution. He was critical in instigating and developing the manufacturing plant in the area.

We on this side get a fair bit of vitriol from Senator Brandis and others about our contribution and who we represent and where we are from. I did take a quick look at Senator Birmingham's personal CV, and I note that he has always been in politics. From university, he went straight into an adviser's job, and that is basically where he has lived his whole life. Knowing that made it a bit easier for me to understand the lack of empathy, the lack of passion, the lack of feeling for his own constituents in South Australia.

Thousands of workers at Holden are facing an uncertain future. Their families are worried. Their children are going to school concerned about whether or not their fathers have a job. Families have to explain that life goes on: 'We will progress through this.' There was a completely chilling lack of empathy for the thousands of workers in this situation. We in this place are duty-bound to represent our constituents. I was particularly struck by Senator Birmingham's contribution, which was to the effect of, 'Let's wipe the board clean and promise a better future.' There are thousands of workers looking at redundancy, retraining, redeployment and relocation. On top of that, there are thousands of small business people who have depended on that workforce and their aggregate income. That small business might be a barber shop. I did read of a woman who has a business adjacent to the Holden plant which provides wedding dresses. She has now immediately relocated, because, she says, 'There's no money coming into this area and so I'd better get into another suburb.' There are thousands of small business people—if you listen to the other side these people are their constituents—who will be dramatically affected by the spin-offs of these terrible close-downs. The dry economic arguments really do not stack up.

I keep returning in this debate to the key point of the Allen Consulting Group report: automotive manufacturing in Australia receives around $500 million in government funding each year and for this investment the Australian economy is $21.5 billion larger for having an automotive manufacturing industry. On a per person basis, government assistance to automotive manufacturing is around $18, a very low figure by international standards. Those figures have been read out in the Senate previously. The $21.5 billion return equates to a net positive $934 per person. This government has come in without too many plans. They were an effective and brilliant opposition; they could tear down any policy; they could misrepresent any situation. Now they are in power and they have their hands on the wheel, and the first thing they do is say, 'No.'

Prior to Christmas, we left this place with the close-down of manufacturing of Holden motor cars. I am probably one of the last people—and certainly the last person in my family—who have never bought anything other than a Holden or a Ford. That loyalty is not shared by my children or my neighbours. I daresay even my wife drives a Mazda. There is nothing wrong with competition, but there is something wrong with just walking away from a very resilient, not heavily subsidised sector of manufacturing, which, as Senator Carr says, is not just about cars. It is about technology; it is about microchips; it is about plastics; it is about glass; it is about engines that are brilliant—engines that have emission standards—and braking systems which are top of the range.

The simple wipe-the-slate-clean approach of Senator Birmingham is to say, 'That's all done, we're not going to make cars here anymore. We'll just get them from overseas.' Let's think about that. We know there are very cheap cars made in India, but most recent studies say that, if you drove one and had a collision, you would not survive too well. We know that the Great Wall brand from China performs abysmally in terms of safety ratings. We know from personal experience and from independent agencies that we make a very good car—we make a startlingly good car. I personally drive a Ford, which I think is the equivalent of a BMW, but it is only about a quarter of the price. We know that, but we also know that what has really driven this position in the automotive manufacturing industry is the high dollar. We were exporting our Camaros to America when the dollar was at a much lower level; we were exporting cars to the Middle East when the dollar was at a lower level. Nothing has changed in respect of the technology or in respect of the quality of the cars produced. I daresay not a lot has changed in relation to industrial relations or the efficiencies of the manufacturing plants other than that they have endorsed change, accepted change, employed more robotics and become very much more efficient.

Today, there has been a disparaging of the union movement in this place. I would like to place on the record that the secretary of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union in South Australia, John Camillo, has been driven all of his working life about employment for his members. And that has meant doing all sorts of things with every manufacturer he has come in contact with to save this industry. It is in his DNA; it is in his lifeblood. Building cars is something Australia was always going to do. Talking to John over Christmas was very disheartening.

I refer to Senator Birmingham's chilling economic view of wiping the board clean and creating a brand-new future. I did not hear in his short speech—maybe he will inform us later on—where these people are going to go. When will these people transition into this brand-new world that this government is going to create? Has he been out and spoken to people about their opportunities? I do not think so; I am not aware that he has been out to speak to people about it. There are many people who would be very grateful if he were to paint the same picture he has tried to paint here today—that the government is going to transition the economy into good jobs, more jobs, whatever.

Unfortunately, without manufacturing in this country we will not have R&D. This is a government without a science minister. We know that the R&D, which comes out of things like the automotive manufacturing industry, is a vast asset to the general economy of Australia. No workforce is static. There is, I think, a photographer in this place who did his apprenticeship at Holden in Elizabeth. He worked in the industry and he went on to take his skills into a different sphere. That is quite normal, but training people to a high standard and then having them take their skills into other sectors of the economy will be completely lost. Let me talk about the warehouse on the road. There are thousands of transport workers and operators currently carrying, exactly on time, every component that goes into a car. There is no great warehouse where these components are stocked; the warehouse is actually on the road—off the ship, on the road, out of the warehouse. What happens to all those people? They will probably start taking things off the wharf, but they will not be transporting components. It will be a much smaller task to transfer any number of cars off a ship to any place in Australia. But the components industry does not work that way. You have V8 motors rolling down the highway on a truck to go to an assembly line. All of that is going to disappear. If you throw in the fundamental offshoots to other sectors of the economy—like coffee shops and other small businesses like coffee shops—then it is really a disaster.