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

It is good that the minister has such a good memory because he would remember the Rudd government securing investment for the Cruze, a small car to be manufactured at the Holden factory in my electorate. He will remember coming for a tour when the company was considering future investment at that plant, and he will remember the devastating day for those workers when the government chased Holden out of the country along with all of the investment they were going to provide. He would no doubt also remember, I think it was on 10 March, when he, or someone else, briefed The Advertiser that $900 million from the Automotive Transformation Scheme would be spent in South Australia and that that was going to reassure the industry and keep stability in our industry. No doubt he would remember on 20 April when Holden announced the reduction of 270 jobs—redundancies that are now flowing through. People in my electorate are being made redundant, are out of work, at a critical time in their lives. Many of these workers are not old men or old women. They are in the prime of their working lives and they have families and investments in South Australia. No doubt he would remember on 11 March James Massola writing in the Fairfax press a headline which said, '"This is an own goal": Ian Macfarlane accused of bungling car industry assistance announcement.' In that story, an unnamed minister—as is so often the case with this government because the cabinet leaks like a sieve—said of your performance:

This is an own goal. It is complete incompetence.

Then:

"We won the war [on industry assistance] but Macfarlane was an unhappy general," the minister continued in a clear reference to the losing fight Mr Macfarlane led in the early days of the Abbott government to keep Holden and Toyota manufacturing in Australia.

It is a pretty devastating story for the minister, I would have thought. So, given all of this history, Minister, perhaps you can let us know, the parliament and the people of South Australia, what your intention is with regard to the Automotive Transformation Scheme. How much of it will be spent in South Australia and how much of it will simply be returned to the Treasury as savings to prop up your budget?

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