Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start by saying how proud I am tonight to hear some of the contributions that have been made on this very important Automotive Transformation Scheme Amendment Bill and to say to the member for Isaacs, the member for Chifley and to those who have spoken in the debate that I stand shoulder to shoulder with Labor people on this side of the House and shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of people in our respective electorates who will lose their jobs directly as a result of this, one of the most wantonly destructive acts that we have seen from this government.

I am one of the younger members of this House, but I am a pretty keen student of history and when I look back I am actually very hard pressed to find a government that has such a shockingly destructive record in their first year in office. I think Billy McMahon is probably the big competition on this one. We can look at some of the things that have happened in the last year, for example: the ham-fisted attempt to introduce a tax on sick people; the obvious and rather pathetic attempts to demonise young Australians who are without work to justify leaving them for six months without any government support; regressive changes that will see much larger numbers of Australians from lower socioeconomic families struggle to make ends meet and be able to go to university. These are some of the destructive acts that we have seen. But of all the things that have happened, forcing the car industry to leave Australia is one of the most wantonly destructive and certainly one of the ones that has the most real and immediate impact on the people that I represent in Hotham.

For those of you who have not been following this closely or perhaps may not remember the events, I sat in this chair as a new member of this House last December and watched with genuine horror and dismay when the Treasurer of this country, the economic leader of Australia, stood with all of the bluster that he brings occasionally into this parliament, pointing his finger and goading Holden to leave Australia. The government had already announced the withdrawal of some $500 million of support—this was of course after the Prime Minister said during the election that he was going to do everything he could to keep the car industry here. Despite that, there was the removal of $500 million of support. Effectively, what we saw was the Treasurer get up and say that they were withdrawing their support and that Holden needed to make up its mind whether it wanted to stay or go, and they may as well get out. That was the effect of his words.

And what did we see after the Treasurer's performance in this chamber in December? We saw that he got his way. Just a day later, I believe—or it might have been a little bit longer—a company that has provided employment for thousands of Australians over multiple generations decided that it would leave the country. That has had a cascading effect of course. Later we saw Toyota make the decision and the announcement that they would be leaving, and on the ground in electorates like the member for Wakefield's electorate and in my electorate of Hotham there was a ricocheting effect.

I am sure that the member for Wakefield is having the same experience that I am already when we go around our communities and talk to people. We are starting to find people who have lost jobs because of this very bill before us, this bill that gives effect to the decisions that have been already made. The government has said in the wake of these appalling decisions that it will do all it can to support affected workers and local economies. They are very hollow words, I have to say, looking at the bill that is before us. Not only was that $500 million of support withdrawn by the government last year in MYEFO, but again, in this most recent budget of the Treasurer's, $400 million of industry support has gone. It just beggars belief. These companies, the component parts manufacturers that are dotted right around my electorate are struggling so much that to then have the government come in and essentially kick them while they are down is appalling. I just cannot believe it.

I will provide a bit of a picture of what it looks like in my community, because I know that a lot of people who will get to talk about this in the caucus rooms over periods of time may not see the impacts of some of these decisions. But we do out in the south-eastern corridor in Melbourne. Nearby, on one the main roads in my electorate, I have an excellent component parts manufacturer who was employing around 400 people. The factory that made the component parts was one of the slickest factories I have ever been to in my life. The efficiency in that place was absolutely astounding—best-practice management, all of the things you want to see in a first-class Australian manufacturer. What I see when I drive past now is a huge 'For lease' sign at the front. They have had to rent out vast amounts of their factory and have already had to start letting workers go. This is what we are seeing in terms of the on-the-ground effects in our electorates, which have been given effect by the bill that is before us today.

The impact of this bill and the fact that like other types of tragic economic circumstances the impacts are not spread evenly around the country, mean that parts of Australia will be much more affected by the decision that is before us. About a thousand people who live in the electorate of Hotham are employed in the car industry. Probably there is one family in every two or three streets in my electorate for whom life will be profoundly changed by this act of wanton destruction by this government. When I think about the suburbs in my electorate, there is Clayton, Mordialloc, Clarinda, Springvale, Springvale and Springvale South where a lot of migrant workers work in the industry and there are people with kids at the primary schools that I so much enjoyed visiting—Clayton South Primary School, Clarinda Primary, Springvale Rise, St Joey's—where these families live and send their children to school. So when I do go out there now and talk to the schools, one of the biggest issues they raise with me is the dire economic circumstances that are being felt by a very large number of families in the electorate who are without a job or who will be over the next couple of years.

We should not forget also the knock-on effects that this will have. We know that there are about 50,000 Australians directly employed in the car industry in one of the big companies or component parts manufacturers. But in areas like Hotham which I represent, and, again, in the member for Wakefield's electorate, there are small businesses that rely on people who are employed in the car industry for their livelihood too. We know that there are about 200,000 people in Australia who may get their income indirectly through auto manufacturing. These are small businesses, corner stores, chemists, bakeries in my electorate that are also going to suffer because of these acts of wanton destruction.

One of the few consistencies that we see with this government is a certain coldness to economic change, which I think really separates the two parties in Australia. I really want people to understand, through the words that I speak today, that these are real people who are being affected by the changes we are seeing. The cruel reality of economic change is that, while we get some benefits, the people who lose their jobs—as we will see through those who lose their jobs through the car industry—often do not get many of the benefits that may open up as a consequence. These are the very people that the government should be trying to protect.

But what do we see from this government? Instead of the trying to protect these people, we see their industry being destroyed by an arrogant approach and act of this government—particularly the Treasurer—and we see all these other forms of social support that exist to try to make sure that everyone in Australia benefits from the economic change being stripped away. It is easy to understand why there are people out there in my electorate, and right around Australia in some of these communities, who are asking why this government has it in for them. They want to know what the government is trying to do. First, the government takes these astounding steps to take away their form of employment and then it bullies them and says that they are sitting at home munching Cheezels because they are taking unemployment benefits. These outrageously contradictory things are happening—and I am very proud to be in the Labor Party, where we are fighting so hard against them.

One of the other important points that gets lost in this debate is the fact that we are actually very good at car manufacturing in Australia. That is one of the real frustrations about the change that is being made. When we look at the different levels of industry support provided to the car manufacturing industry around the world, we see that the per capita cost of car industry support in Australia is about $17.40. That per capita amount in Germany is $90, in America it is $264 and in Sweden it is $334.

There are only about 13 countries in the world that have the capability to make a car end to end. Australia is one of them. There are huge amounts of R&D. The car industry in Australia are leading experts in R&D. What has been so unfortunate is that the governments has been trying to trash the credentials of our automotive industry and our manufacturing industry in Australia in an attempt to justify this withdrawal of support which we believe is so unjustified.

There are issues around the car industry in recognising that we were good at manufacturing cars, but I think there are other things that we need to think about as well—that is, the broader knock-on effects of not having a car manufacturing industry in Australia. We know that economies are ecosystems and when you change one thing in the economy many other things change too. When you talk to people who are experts in innovation policy, all of them will tell you that having a manufacturing industry in this country is essential for Australia to be an innovation economy. But what we see on the other side of the House is ignorance, or ignoring, of these factors.

The other thing that is important is capability. What are we going to see now? We will see a generation of people who have got quite a lot of skill in car manufacturing who, most likely, will have to retrain and learn to do something completely different—and all those skills that we have worked so hard on over so many years just lost.

I want to make a final point on a broader economic issue and about what this indicates for the workforce in Australia. I think that is one of the lesser discussed elements of this act of wanton destruction. One of the biggest issues that we face in Australia in terms of the impact of economic change is the issue of the quality of jobs for people who have low to medium levels of skill. A generation to three generations ago, young people who left school—who maybe were not particularly academic, although, some of them were very academic—and decided not to go into tertiary education went into manufacturing. In general, those young people were able to walk into a full-time well-paid job in manufacturing and spend their lives making something and doing something important and something of value. What we are seeing is that, as manufacturing declines in Australia, those jobs are not being replaced by other terrific high-quality permanent jobs. Instead, many of these people are having to take jobs that are not only lower paid and with worst conditions—so this idea of increasing casualisation of our workforce—but also in industries where they are not going to ever get to that level of wage, because the value that is being created is simply not at the same standard as we saw in manufacturing.

Although there is a prevailing narrative in Australia about economic rationalism and us not getting too involved in the economy, there are lots of reasons that manufacturing is incredibly important. We have to address the question of what we are going to do for young people in Australia now. We see very large unemployment rates for young people in certain areas of Australia. What jobs are these young people going to do? I want to leave that question hanging with the government over there—the people who are meant to be in charge of some of this deep thinking. What are the young people of the future going to do when we have the approach that we see so on the other side of the House, where the Treasurer feels that he is entitled to stand up and goad a company that has employed thousands of Australians over generations in jobs where they got to make something of value? We need to think about the future—not just right now but what the Australian economy is going to look like in a generation—and whether we are happy to live in a country which does not have a manufacturing industry. I, for one, am not.

We talked a little bit before about Billy McMahon and so I want to finish with a quick anecdote. There was a funny instance where Billy McMahon at one stage, close to the end of his term, was asked about what his view was on the future of Australia. He rummaged through a very weighty briefing document that his department had prepared for him and then ended up saying to the journalist, 'No, nothing on the future here.' Today, that is how I feel about the bill before us and how I feel when I look across the chamber at the government. And I say that Labor will not stand for this. We will fight. We will continue to fight for the people we represent to whom automotive manufacturing in this country is worth so much and is so important.

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