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

I would also like to acknowledge that the member for Swan was most restrained in his speech and paid tribute to the Central Districts Football Club, which is always a good thing. I rise to support the Automotive Transformation Scheme Bill 2009. This bill is a $3.4 billion plan and is the foundation for our New Car Plan for a Greener Future. The automotive industry remains the cornerstone of Australian manufacturing. It creates some $5.8 billion in export revenue and directly employs over 52,000 people. Car manufacturing is a hugely important industry in my electorate, where one in four workers in the city of Playford is employed in manufacturing. Elizabeth is a place that was born to make Holdens and to make cars. It was born for manufacturing, and thousands of my constituents have worked there or had a family member work there over the last 30 years or longer. So it is a very important industry for jobs and economic growth, but it is also important in so many ways to the identity of Elizabeth and the northern suburbs. I can remember many of my friends, after graduating from school, going to work there.

Currently, over 3,100 South Australians work at Holden, and these workers have felt the effect of the global recession. While no jobs have been lost, many sacrifices have been made, particularly with the loss of the afternoon shift. The company has moved to an incorporated day shift with a one week on, one week off roster, and the second week is at half pay. I know many afternoon shiftworkers who have had to completely rearrange their lives, including things like child care, which is an enormous expense in a family’s budget. It has been a very trying time for some families, particularly those with a mortgage, those with children and those with overheads. Many workers have taken up leave voluntarily to assist the company and to help other workers get their hours, and some 370 workers have taken up the opportunity to have more time for their own purposes. That has been a good arrangement. It has allowed some people to have more hours and other people to have more leisure. Obviously, the downturn has affected different people in different ways, but there have been great sacrifices made to retain jobs and to assist the company in a time of international economic turmoil, a time when the car industry has been at the front line of these economic changes.

It is a testament to the workers and their union, the vehicle-building division of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. It is a very proud division of the union with a very strong history in South Australia of protecting members’ rights at the Holden plant and a very strong tradition of standing up for what is right. This union has very strong and sensible leadership in South Australia from the secretary, John Camillo, and the vehicle division secretary, John Gee, and it has a hard-working, highly skilled, well-paid membership, who have been very quick to respond to the new economic circumstances. It is that approach that has helped to attract new investment to the plant, and that is a huge achievement when you consider the global state of car manufacturing.

A recent report in the Messenger newspaper highlights that morale is at a six-month high in the plant following a series of very positive statements by the company. Senior shop steward Michael Etherington said:

If you go a few months back we felt like we’d been kicked pretty hard.

But there’s been a major upsurge in confidence.

Things are starting to pick up and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

These announcements include the launch of the new small car, the Cruze, by the Prime Minister in December at the Holden plant in Elizabeth. I was there. A lot of workers who were actually on leave at that stage came in in their uniforms with their families. There were a lot of very young kids there and there was a sausage sizzle and the like. There was a really amazing and positive reception to the announcement. The Cruze is currently selling very well in the Australian market and from all accounts it is a great car. Some 2,000 of these new vehicles were sold in the first month, according to industry figures. It has had a pretty good start, and manufacturing will begin next year on that small car here in Australia, in Elizabeth. It defies the nay-sayers. It defies the people who were running around saying that car manufacturing was on its last legs in Australia. We got a new model up at a time of international economic uncertainty.

Of course, we also have the new model Commodore, which I am particularly looking forward to. I am sure it will be an absolute ripper of a car and very fuel efficient to boot, and I hope that this will encourage all Australians to buy Australian made cars. This especially applies to state governments, some of which have been purchasing foreign made vehicles for their fleets in recent years. The erosion of state governments buying Australian made cars is a very big concern because it is a vital part of the domestic market. Those fleet sales help Australian car manufacturers no end, and I would certainly like to see some state governments change their policies. It is interesting to note that the South Australian government and the Victorian government have very good policies on that front, but some of the other states have allowed things to slip.

Considering the importance of the automotive industry to the Australian economy and to so many families in my electorate, I am proud to support this bill, which demonstrates the government’s commitment to the automotive industry. It is a bill which is at the heart of the government’s comprehensive A New Car Plan for a Greener Future. This bill will assist in protecting jobs as the automotive industry faces intense pressure from the global economic downturn. The Automotive Transformation Scheme Bill 2009 sets up a legislative framework and administrative details for a new scheme, which replaces the previous government’s Automotive Competitiveness and Investment Scheme, ACIS.

The new scheme offers greater flexibility to deal with changing circumstances that are facing the automotive industry over the next decade. The scheme will start in 2010, and it is estimated that $3.4 billion in grants to the industry will be delivered over 10 years from 2011. This new, better targeted and greener scheme looks to the future by increasing the level of assistance for research and development, by improving environmental outcomes and by requiring participants to promote work-first skills development. There has been a great deal of that going on at Holden in the run-up to the launch of the new Commodore. The company has made a major investment in skills while the workforce has been getting ready for that new model. This transformation is already going on in the industry, and this bill will assist it.

It will be a self-assessment scheme, which will enable prompt payments to industry and reduce administrative costs and red tape—we are all fond of talking about it in this place but this bill actually does it. Robust verification and compliance mechanisms will be put in place, the most certain of which is the right of the Commonwealth to recover any overpaid moneys to scheme participants. Right now, the automotive industry needs a strong legislative framework and an equally robust commitment from government and, I have to say, from opposition, to encourage long-term planning for the future. This is an industry where there are very long lead times on investment. This bill delivers in these areas and provides much needed certainty for the future.

It is interesting to note that opposition speakers the member for Wide Bay and the member for Mayo went on a bit of a theoretical, rhetorical question and answer session with themselves in their speeches. I think this is rather disappointing, because when you get up and talk about the troubles besetting the industry, or about Mitsubishi and things like that, you do not focus on the future investment opportunities or on the real story that is happening on the ground.

It is significant to acknowledge that this commitment by the government does come at the same time as the legislative reduction in automotive tariffs from 10 per cent to five per cent in January 2010. This reduction will mean that Australia’s tariffs on passenger motor vehicles will be amongst the lowest in the world and we will have the fifth most open market for passenger vehicles in the world. That reflects the government’s belief that the long-term viability of the Australian automotive sector does not lie behind high tariff walls but in its ability to increase its innovation, its capacity, its competitiveness and its global integration. I have expressed to this House before my reservations about rapid tariff reduction—reservations that I and many of my constituents still hold—but it has not stopped us from looking to the future and it has not stopped us from backing investment in the industry.

As I said before, the global economic downturn is having a particularly negative effect on communities reliant on the manufacturing industry. Those communities look to us for certainty and, unfortunately, they have not found it in the opposition. We heard speeches in this debate from the member for Wide Bay questioning the value of the car industry, questioning why we should give assistance to it, and then we heard the member for Mayo talking about the same thing. It is an extraordinary thing for a South Australian member to be questioning the value of the car industry and our support for the car industry. But, unfortunately, it does outline the kind of push-me, pull-you approach of the opposition because, on one hand, we have Senator Abetz saying on 11 November last year that the coalition has ‘a very proud record of supporting the car industry’ and how that support is completely reasonable. He also said that it is not a better package ‘when you take into account the number of years it’s spread over’. Against that, you have Tony Abbott saying just the opposite:

There have been a lot of assistance packages for the car industry and the real issue of any future package is just how long is this going to last?

Will the car industry in this country ever be able to stand on its own two feet? Will Kevin Rudd be able to give a guarantee that any new package of assistance really will be the last package?

And Joe Hockey said:

I don’t know that it is necessarily the right thing to hand money immediately to the motor vehicle industry in Australia without knowing whether those key companies are going to be merging or even won’t even exist in 12 months time.

That was the member for North Sydney in an interview with Laurie Oakes on the Sunday program on 9 November 2008—an extraordinary thing to be saying in the context of an international recession. To be questioning whether or not the car industry would even be present in Australia is a tremendously irresponsible thing to be doing at this time. Certainly, it undermines the people in Elizabeth, the people in Geelong and it undermines this country’s capacity to get new investment and it is a complete contradiction of the government’s position and sometimes of the opposition’s stated position. One minute the opposition are one side of the debate, the other minute they are the other side of the debate. They cannot seem to make up their mind. We hear this in many of the speeches when they say, ‘On one hand, we support the car industry, we support the workers, we want to see them here,’ and then they go on these rhetorical exercises without evidence, without any backing, about the future of the car industry. I think it is tremendously irresponsible at this time.

It bring us to what the car industry itself desires out of this legislation. I have a media release here from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries—a peak body of the industry—which calls on the federal opposition not to delay or frustrate the passage of this legislation. It quotes Andrew Mckellar as saying:

Now is not the time for political opportunism.

It goes on to quote Mr Mckellar as saying:

Tens of thousands of automotive jobs, as well as vital investment decisions are dependent on the support of this crucial legislation. The legislation will provide the industry with the confidence to invest in new technologies and support the development of lower emissions and greener vehicles in Australia. Any delay will cause unnecessary uncertainty and concern.

Mr Mckellar puts it far better than I could in saying that the opposition cannot afford to question or delay this legislation and cannot afford to frustrate this legislation, as is their wont to do with so many bills in the Senate. They should just get on and pass it. I am confident that this bill strengthens the government’s commitment.

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