Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs (Senator Ronaldson) to questions without notice asked today.

After 65 years in Australia, with a long and proud history of building the cars that Australian families drive, Holden is reduced to just one friend at the cabinet table. But it is not just Holden that has been abandoned by those in cabinet opposite; the government has abandoned tens of thousands of families in Victoria and South Australia who rely on the automotive industry for the livelihoods, to pay their mortgages and to buy their weekly groceries. Mr Greg Hunt, Mr Kevin Andrews, Mr Bruce Billson and Mr Andrew Robb, all from my state of Victoria and all in the cabinet, have all abandoned the automotive sector in Victoria. You could at least have expected Mr Christopher Pyne, the only South Australian in cabinet, to strongly support the industry that means so much to his state, but no. In amongst the looting of $1.2 billion of taxpayers' funds to bail Mr Pyne out of his debacle last week, he turned on South Australian families who are supported by work in the automotive sector. He could find a billion dollars to save his own skin, but he could not find an extra cent to keep families paying their mortgages. The lone voice in cabinet supporting the automotive industry and the jobs and families that it represents was Minister Macfarlane.

But worse than simply abandoning Holden has been the decision taken by a significant number of cabinet ministers to background journalists and leak against the Minister for Industry and against Holden, its workforce and the families that it supports. This is, frankly, a stunning state of affairs. We have a minister who is trying to support a company that employs thousands of Australians being publicly trashed by his own cabinet colleagues. This type of destructive backgrounding is entirely unprecedented.

But what is most galling is that the workers being trashed by coalition cabinet ministers are among the most productive in Australia. Research in yesterday's Guardian Australia shows that labour productivity in the machine- and equipment-manufacturing sector has grown strongly and consistently for the last two decades. Australian automotive manufacturing workers are productive, hardworking and highly skilled. Holden boss Mike Devereux is reported to have told the Productivity Commission again today that workers and unions in the automotive industry continue to work closely with management to drive productivity, and all this is happening while senior coalition ministers are cheerily digging a grave for this Australian icon.

There are many small and medium businesses in my home state of Victoria that will suffer if the government withdraws support for the automotive industry. Here are just some of those companies, and the families who work for them will be directly impacted: Australian Arrow in Carrum Downs, Diver Consolidated Industries in Reservoir, Katcon in Keysborough, Venture DMG in Keysborough, Multifoam in Dandenong South and Staetite Fasteners in Heidelberg West. Those opposite, particularly those 18 cabinet ministers who have turned their backs on the industry and sold out those workers, should hang their heads in shame. Once again this government is proving that it is not— (Time expired)

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, as you are fully aware, I am a car guy. I love cars and I love car culture. I am a member of a number of car clubs. I participate in all sorts of car activities. I love cars of all sorts, especially performance cars, and I love the fact that Australia makes cars and has since the early days of the auto industry. I love the iconic cars that we have made, like the GTHO phase III Falcon from the early seventies, the L34 and A9X Toranas, the R-T series Chargers, and more recently the HSV and the Ford Performance Vehicles offerings. They are all great cars; I love them. But I do not think that taxpayers should be the owners of car companies or build cars. This is best done by private companies who are responding to market forces and demands. But, in saying that, I note that private companies need to have a level playing field. They need to be able to compete in ways that are reasonable and, as I say, on a level playing field. In that regard, I found the article by Grace Collier in The Australian today very interesting reading and I would encourage everybody to have a look at it.

But that is not to say that there is not a role for government to play in assisting car companies through transition. Historically, bipartisan support has existed for transition assistance for the car companies, but transition assistance does not mean funding them forever. Questions about the future and viability of the Australian auto industry as it remains are rightly being asked at the moment and are rightly being sent for consideration by the Productivity Commission. It is clear that Ford is leaving already, GMH is currently under threat and Toyota potentially would have challenges down the track as well. It is right to ask the question now and to ask the Productivity Commission to have a look at what factors are influencing the viability of our auto industry.

What are the things that government can realistically and properly do to assist with that viability? And what are the other challenges facing it that the government can impact on? Government, indeed Australians, need to know the answers to these questions. It is not something that we should just do in an ad hoc, knee-jerk reaction and hand out money whenever it is asked for. We need to understand what the challenge is, what the problems are in the longer term to make sure that we set the auto industry on the correct path if that is indeed possible, which I readily hope it is.

Any decisions the government make following the Productivity Commission's findings also have to be made in the context of the debt position that the previous government has left us. We need to be responsible in how we approach dealing with that debt challenge. Unfortunately for industries right across the country, that means that there is less money to throw around propping them up. That said, I mentioned that I am very interested in hearing what the findings of the Productivity Commission will be because that may well provide us with a pathway to help ensure the viability of the auto industry in Australia. I would love to see that happen but, I do repeat, we have to do that responsibly and we have to do it in the context of the great fiscal challenge that we have been left by the previous government—$250 billion worth of net debt.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why are you increasing it then?

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You may well ask: why are we increasing the debt limit? That is because debt—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You abolished the debt limit and raised the amount of debt.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Government spending is not something that you can turn around at the click of a finger. Think of a large oil tanker at full steam in the open seas. If you decide you want to turn around because you are going in the wrong direction, you cannot just turn it around on a dime. It takes something like 10 kilometres to actually stop a large oil tanker. It keeps on going for a long time even though it is in reverse. That is an analogy of what we are facing with debt. The previous Labor government set us on the debt trajectory that is going to take a long time to turn around. It is not an easy thing to do. We can put it into reverse, we can turn the thrusters on backwards but it is still going to keep on going for many kilometres before we can even stop.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have added $10 billion.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Conroy, you are continually interjecting. Please desist.

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian government fiscal situation is like an oil tanker. The government has it heading full-steam in the wrong direction. It is not something you can turn around on a dime. It is going to take us a long time before we can even stop that oil tanker moving in the wrong direction never mind actually turning it around and getting it going in the direction it should be.

Senator Conroy mentioned that Australian-made cars are the cars that Australian families drive. That certainly was the case once upon a time; every house had a Falcon, a Kingswood or a Commodore—depending on the time that you are talking about—parked in the garage. But that is not so much the case now. That is one of the things that the Productivity Commission needs to look at. We need to understand the challenges facing the automotive industry in Australia at the moment. (Time expired)

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

I rise to make a contribution in this debate on taking note of answers of Senator Ronaldson and Senator Cormann. I do so with a deep sense of foreboding because the contribution from—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will just correct the record there. The motion is we are taking note of answers given by Senators Abetz and Ronaldson.

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

My apologies, Mr Deputy President. I need to restate that the contribution from the other side over a couple of days in this debate has not given me any sense of confidence that there will be a successful outcome here. In fact, Senator Bushby mentioned the outcome of the Productivity Commission but the Prime Minister has ruled out any additional funds prior to the Productivity Commission making its determination. So I suppose it takes us back to where we are at.

On 7 September there was an election and a government was elected, a government that has been characterised as having its first 100 days of delays. We have the National Commission of Audit due to come in on 17 January and a bit more in March. And answers to almost every question on almost every topic in this chamber are 'we will not commit'.

We have a dire situation in the automotive industry. The Senate is a representative body of states with 12 senators for each state. We have had one contribution from Senator Edwards, which I will say no more about but it did not inspire me with any confidence that there was any great support for the automotive industry in South Australia. We have had nothing from Senator Fawcett, nothing from Senator Birmingham although he did say something this morning. He said he supported the car industry—and has remained stubbornly silent ever since. We have seen nothing from Senator Ruston, nothing from Senator Bernardi. It is very unusual; Senator Bernardi is usually the most vocal of the senators from South Australia on a whole range of issues. So all of those thousands of people in South Australia looking at their representatives in this chamber have had a very poor result from the other side. In fact, what has been coming back is chilling. This industry is so important to our state and, as rightly pointed out by Senator Conroy, it is vastly important to Victoria. The spin-off is immense. BlueScope Steel could be dramatically affected by any closure of the automotive industry in South Australia as could transport companies. Toll transport and Allied Transport are all part of the exactly-on-time logistics chain. The impact if this industry does not get the wherewithal to continue and commit to the additional billion dollars' worth of funding which those opposite have been asked to put on is going to be devastating. Devastating is probably not the word. All of those families are living with this uncertainty while this government procrastinates and delays, with a background of leaking, with a background of telling journalists, 'We are dry economic people here. We do not really want to be chipping in.'

One lower House member has put his name up to the front, Alex Hawke. Alex Hawke tweeted this morning, referring to a very partisan article in TheAustralian, which basically says the workers at Holden should take about a 67 per cent pay cut. I am sure it is very encouraging for them at this time of the year and with this uncertainty over their heads.

The reality of what is happening here is inaction. You claim you have a mandate to govern and you claim you have a mandate to do all sorts of things. What you should be doing is stepping up to the plate and securing the future of the automotive industry. The automotive industry is the largest contributor to manufacturing research and development. The skills developed in that endeavour are not contained to the automotive industry. Those people get trained, work in the automotive industry and then go across the whole manufacturing sector. If we want to be a smarter country and if we want to add value, this industry cannot be allowed to wither and die just because there are dry economic rationalists in the Liberal Party.

If this was something to do with agriculture like GrainCorp, then the Nats would be all over it, the Hon. Joe Hockey would be bullied into submission and we would have certainty. But, unfortunately in this case, it is the automotive industry and this government looks set to let it wither and die.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By way of background, the first car I ever had was a Fiat 500, and every other car since then—and there must be 50 or 60 of them—has been a Holden. I hope the last car that I have will be a Holden too because they have served me very well. I have never been in a position where I have not been able to get it back home one way or another. So I support the car industry, but let us not write the car industry off yet.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

There is no decision being made on the car industry, so do not get in there and beat this up or develop a straw man so you can knock it over. That is what you are doing. No decision has been made.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Conroy.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After your contribution on the NBN, Senator Conroy, I would curl up in a little round ball and hide under the desk.

When Hawke and Keating took tariffs off, we became part of the world. We could not then just hide behind a tariff wall. We all applauded that—you applauded that. But what Keating and Hawke did was say, 'We are competitive,' so we had to take on the rest of the world in car manufacturing where costs are so much lower, where wages are so much lower and where OH&S is so much more realistic. This is the result that is coming home. We used to get by by paying higher wages and by paying for good conditions. We all want that for workers, but that was all underpinned by having cheap energy. That is what we did in Australia. We had high wages and high conditions and we all applauded it. Then, you came along. The one thing that we had going for Australia was the abundance of cheap coal and cheap energy. So what did you do then? You said: 'Here is our natural advantage. We do not need a natural advantage and our workers do not need a natural advantage. We will throw them to the wolves.' You through them to the wolves and you put a $400 carbon tax on every car.

While you procrastinate and not let the legislation go through, while you filibuster, you are hurting every worker in Australia, because you will not recognise that it is not only Holden and Ford but also Qantas who have to pay a $100 million carbon tax. It is the whole industry. Today a little mine in Queensland with 200 workers went belly-up. Why? Because there is a carbon tax. There is a litany of broken manufacturers out there, and you let these people go broke: McCain, with 59 employees—gone; Simplot—gone; Golden Circle—gone; Downer EDI—gone; Electrolux—gone; Caterpillar—gone; Rio Tinto, out of Gove; WesTrac—gone; and Peabody Energy—gone today. Then there is Kresta, Cussons, Aeroguard, Harley-Davidson, Bosch, Penrice Soda, Norsk Hydro, Shell and Goodman Fielder, and Queensland Aluminium where 4,500 jobs have been lost. While the jobs are flooding out, you are procrastinating. All of this is not only because of a carbon tax and renewable energy but also because of the high dollar. But the carbon tax and renewable energy are playing a very significant role in the demise of Australian industry.

How can you face this parliament? How can you possibly go back and talk to unions when you are slitting their throats and costing them jobs? You are destroying them. Why do you take their money? Why do you take their union fees and betray them? You are betraying them every time you try to block the repeal of the carbon tax. The carbon tax has destroyed so many jobs in the manufacturing industry and so many jobs in the mining industry. The mining and coal industries are trying to make a quid; many of them are not. They are saying, 'If we didn't have a mining tax and if we didn't have a carbon tax, we would not be terribly profitable but we would be in the black, not in the red.' What is wrong with you? Why do you have to be led around by the nose by the Greens? Why do you have to do take notice of them? (Time expired)

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to take note of answers given by government senators to questions asked by Senator Wong and Senator Carr about the future of Australia's automotive industry. We keep asking questions of the government about the future of the automotive industry because the answers we get are totally unsatisfactory. They are not answers, in fact; they are just responses. They do not answer the question of whether or not this government will act to save the 200,000 jobs supported by the automotive industry. The responses we get offer no solace to Holden workers in my state who want to know how much longer they will have a job for. The responses we get only reveal that there are deep divisions in this federal government about whether or not Australia's auto industry and all those who work in it and rely on it should continue to be supported as they were under the former Labor government.

I know the Premier of South Australia is coming to Canberra this week to speak to the Prime Minister about the future of the car industry. I know he is passionate about saving the South Australian jobs in the car industry and doing what he can to secure a future for Holden and the 1,700 workers in South Australia that it employs.

I know that all South Australian Labor senators in this place and Labor members in the other place have spoken out in support of the auto industry and called on the federal government to step up to the mark and declare exactly what it plans to do. However, I do not know what South Australian Liberal senators are doing because they do not tell us. It is extraordinary. Over the last two days, in taking note on this important matter of the auto industry, we have not had one South Australian Liberal senator stand up and put their point of view. Not one!

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rubbish!

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's just not true!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In taking note, we have had, as we just heard, a Tasmanian senator, Senator Colbeck, and another Tasmanian senator, Senator Bushby—

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tasmanians are people too!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have not seen too many cars made in Tasmania, Senator Fifield!

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They use them!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have not seen too many cars made there!

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They drive them!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And we have had a senator from Western Australia and now a senator from Queensland—and I fail to find any auto industry in Queensland. So we do not know what Liberal senators are doing.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They don't use the horse and buggy!

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! On my right!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We do know what some unnamed Liberal senators are doing, though. They are backgrounding journalists and saying that Holden is going to pull out of Australia. But today we heard from the CEO of Holden himself at the Productivity Commission that no decision had been made.

No decision has been made by Holden, so why are coalition ministers, unnamed, going around and saying that Holden is going to pull out of Australia? Why are they forcing their own minister—Minister Macfarlane—to try to defend and reclaim his portfolio space? What is this all about? What is the hidden agenda of those coalition ministers who are backgrounding journalists?

Is it because the economic dries have taken over the Liberal Party completely? You would have to think so, wouldn't you? Because they are the people who believe in a no-holds-barred, no-strings-attached complete economic freefall for all, and whose ideological obsessions blind them to the fact that governments do sometimes need to support industries. But there is more to supporting an industry than letting go of the levers and watching the freefall that happens, and hoping that some people and some organisations survive out of that. We know that the member for Mayo, the member for Sturt and the member for Higgins all have that ideological obsession. They want to let the automotive industry fall, basically.

I would like to conclude, however, by noting that one South Australian senator has made some comments about this; one South Australian senator, and that is Senator Bernardi. I do not know who saw Senator Bernardi interviewed last night, but it sent shivers down my spine when he was asked about the automotive industry. What did he do? He reverted to type, and he said that what they should do in the auto industry is to look at those union agreements that they have negotiated at Holden. Surprise, surprise, surprise! Is this what it is all about, really? Is it about attacking ordinary working people and their unions, who have negotiated decent enterprise agreements for the automotive industry? That is probably what it is all about.

I can tell you, Mr Deputy President, that the unions will stand behind automotive workers in South Australia and Victoria and in the other industries that are dependent on the automotive industry. South Australian Labor senators will stand behind automotive workers. The people who will not stand behind them are Liberal South Australian senators, who have refused to participate in this debate and who are standing by watching the auto industry come to its knees. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.