Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2008-2009 and the cognate bill. I think their passage is essential to the stability of the Australian economy and to the good works that the government is doing for the wellbeing of the Australian people. I want to concentrate on, perhaps in less detail than the former speaker, the member for Lyne, and talk a little bit about the car industry and vehicle manufacturing—in particular, the early signs of success of the government’s $6.2 billion car plan. This car plan was designed to drive investment to make the Australian car industry both economically and environmentally efficient. I think that is a very important goal, and it is coming at precisely the right time.

While I did notice other speakers talking about manufacturing plants being in trouble in Albury, there are some positive signs. In the electorate of Corio, I know that Ford has reversed its decision to close an engine plant. I think that is the first time in living memory that a corporate player, a company, has changed its mind about the closure of a plant. It is an extraordinary decision and a real vote of confidence in not only Geelong but also the government’s support for this industry. It is really welcome.

The second indication of the car plan’s success—and I think this is a very big indication of the early signs of success—is the announcement by General Motors Holden last December of its intention to build a new front-wheel drive, four-cylinder car at its factory in Elizabeth. This was a big day for Elizabeth in late December. The Prime Minister visited the factory. It was closed down at the time for its maintenance period, and most of the workers were on holidays, but we still had around 1,500 workers show up to the plant in their uniforms for this announcement. There was a tremendously positive feel. Lots of workers were holding signs up about the new car and about the vote of confidence in the Elizabeth plant that this is. A lot of families and a lot of kids were really enjoying not just the Prime Minister’s presence but also the commitment of the company and the government to this vital manufacturing plant in my electorate.

The new car is going to be part of the global Delta small-car platform. It is a vehicle which will be integrated into the global operations of GM. That is incredibly important. In the Bracks review, one of the issues—particularly around components but also around vehicle manufacturing—was that automotive products need to be integrated into the global platforms of these companies. That is increasingly where the car industry will go in the future. I think this immediate crisis will drive that process and accelerate it in some instances. It is really an important feature of this car. It will support up to 1,200 jobs in the factory in my electorate and it is critically important for not just those manufacturing jobs but also all the component suppliers that exist in the northern and southern suburbs of Adelaide. In the city of Playford, one in four workers is employed in manufacturing, so it is of vital importance to the local area.

These jobs are going to be green-collar just as much as blue-collar jobs. They are secured by cooperation between the company, the workers, the union and both levels of government. The Rann government in South Australia is to be congratulated for its commitment. Premier Rann was there on the day, which was a welcome sign of state and federal cooperation. But it is also worth noting that Holden’s workers, led by their local delegate, Mr Paul Brown, and the vehicle division of the AMWU, were very disciplined and moderate in their claims during the enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations which happened just prior to this announcement. That was really critical, because it showed real commitment to the new project. The two were linked. That future investment was, I think, linked to the successful conclusion of the EBA negotiations.

Importantly, the new vehicle is going to be about 20 per cent more fuel efficient than current vehicles. It is going to emit about 20 per cent less carbon. It is a green car. Its production lays the foundation for the introduction of hybrid engines, the use of ethanol, the use of LPG and the use of CNG. All of those things are very important in the evolution of not just this small car but also other Australian made cars to more fuel efficient and more environmentally friendly vehicle design.

The federal government is contributing $149 million over three years to this project—money that will be very well spent to support a new car, local jobs and investment in the future. Despite the critics—and there are many critics inside this parliament and outside of it—the government is absolutely committed to backing this industry and to making sure that we have future investment in this industry so that General Motors Holden will still be around and there will still be workers employed in that factory long after I have retired from parliament. There are many naysayers in the press who want to constantly run a negative story about these things. It is disappointing that there are critics in the opposition. Only last year the member for North Sydney, the new shadow Treasurer, told the Sunday program: ‘I don’t know that it is necessarily the right thing to do to hand money immediately to the motor vehicle industry.’ That is what was said, at that time, by the new shadow Treasurer. Basically it is the wait-and-see approach, the ‘we’re not going to help’ approach. I think that the new car announcement has proved critics like the member for North Sydney wrong.

The government rejects that sort of armchair-general approach to economic management, where you sort of sit back and wait and see. We want to take action. We want to be ahead of the curve. We know that it is important not just for triggering new investment in this industry but for the economy as a whole. It is incredibly good news for the car industry in my electorate; but we know that there are problems facing global automotive manufacturing, and there is no hiding from that. There is also no hiding from the fact that there are ramifications for our car industry in South Australia. In the local paper, the News Review Messenger, on 4 February this year, there was an article with the headline ‘On an enforced holiday’. It talked about the program of planned shutdowns of the Elizabeth plant. There are some 25 days of scheduled shutdowns. Workers in that plant are either taking holidays or they are on 50 per cent of their pay, thanks to their enterprise bargaining agreement negotiated by their union. But even then we find workers are looking in other areas for work. Paul Brown, a senior shop steward, was quoted in this article as saying that workers are ‘looking in landscaping and gardening, helping friends out in small businesses, stuff like that’. I think that shows that those workers need the government on their side. They need the government to do what it is currently doing in terms of the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. They could not afford delay in that program. They could not afford the wait-and-see approach of the Liberal Party. By the time we wait and see, it will be too late. And if you wait and see, there is an opportunity cost. If we had taken that approach to the car industry, we would have missed out on this new investment.

Communities like Elizabeth, Salisbury and Gawler understand from practical experience what the Liberal Party do not understand, and that is: action is required immediately. We cannot afford indecision and we cannot afford division at this time, either in this parliament or within the Liberal Party. It is so disappointing, at a time when workers in my electorate have got 25 days of planned shutdowns and are looking at other areas to work in, like doing work in small business, that we have got two senior members of respective factions of the Liberal Party in my state—a senator and the new Manager of Opposition Business in the House—arguing about what was said at a golf game 14 years ago. It is absolutely extraordinary. It is a bit like the Great Gatsby v Little Lord Fauntleroy—just incredibly childish. I think that the Liberal Party have got to get their act together. They have got to start supporting the car industry rather than knocking it and they have got to come to grips with the nature of the new economic challenge.

There is this attitude in the Liberal Party in which they think that we exist in a bubble in 2007, when mining royalties and the commodities boom were driving government revenue, and that nothing has changed, but the reality is that we have had the most serious collapse in the world economy since the 1930s. We have seen a retraction of credit. We have seen the collapse of international banks, the collapse of international consumer confidence and the loss of jobs from indebted companies. There was recently an article in Time magazine that had an example of some of the banks in America. Citibank, for instance, received $45 billion in assistance from the TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program from the US government, and the value of the bank at the time of this article was $22.9 billion. It gives you an idea that, even though government is acting in the United States, we face an extraordinary situation with international banks, and that is having massive effects on economies around the world.

Likewise, there was an article in Foreign Policy which was headlined ‘The List: the Next Iceland’. It goes through five economies—I will not go through all of them—and calls Great Britain ‘Reykjavik-on-Thames’. It says:

The question in Britain is no longer when the economy will enter a recession, but when it will enter a depression, with many bracing for a slump that could rival the 1930s in severity.

There is no doubt that, internationally, we face extraordinary challenges, and that will have an effect on the Australian economy. We know that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has warned that the UK is in deep recession in 2009. There was a bit of talk about sales in the United Kingdom in the House today. It seems to me that things in the United Kingdom are very serious indeed. We know that the government has to act ahead of the curve. That was best highlighted by Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation, who was quoted in The Age on Saturday, 7 February:

“The downturn in Australia is very late,” he told an investor briefing.

“It is beginning to hit now, but we are not yet feeling it the way we have felt it in Britain.”

We can see the signs, overseas, of a very serious economic situation and that is why it has been important for the government to act and to take strong, decisive and extraordinary action in order to support our economy. That is why it is important that we guaranteed deposits, something that has helped our banks raise the funds they need from overseas. It is why it was important for us to have the Economic Security Strategy, which supported pensioners, pumped money into the economy before Christmas and helped to support the retail sector. There is plenty of positive evidence, both in retail sales and anecdotally from retailers. I was talking today to a furniture manufacturer in my electorate who employs 20 or so people making furniture, which is a really great thing to do, and he says he has not seen the effect of the economic downturn in main street sales. But if you go a couple of steps behind and talk to engineering firms, they are certainly seeing it. There is no doubt in my mind that the government’s strategy in December is working, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Nation Building and Jobs Plan will also work.

Workers in my electorate will certainly welcome the $900 bonus for low- and middle-income families and singles and to students, to drought affected farmers and to single-income families. They will also welcome the support for tradespeople in the building industry; the largest ever single investment in housing to build 20,000 new defence homes, many of which are in my electorate—there is a $26 million commitment in Wakefield; 500 new science labs or language centres in secondary schools; funding for maintenance and school building upgrades; and tax breaks for small business. These are all really important measures and, as I said before, we know that a great many of our measures are already working. On 12 February a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald read ‘Housing shines amid more economic gloom’. Basically it talks about new home buyers charging into the market and taking advantage of the government’s grant program to get an asset that they will hold, hopefully, for the rest of their lives.

So we think these projects are incredibly important. We know that the communities we represent have welcomed the action we have taken to support the banks, the action we took in December to support pensioners and the action we have taken to support new home buyers and that they will also support the Nation Building and Jobs Plan and the measures we are taking to build public schools and to improve the nation’s homes through insulation. They know that this government is ahead of the curve and is taking action to ensure that we have a good and strong economy in a time of international peril. I commend the bills to the House.

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