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

I digress. Anyway, most recently we had a headline just before the budget, 'Hang on … help is on its way', about how Mr Morrison, another Treasurer, is now promising $100 million for businesses to 'evolve' after Holden's closure. So we have one headline daring GM to leave and another headline telling us that help is on its way in terms of manufacturing. We know that literally thousands of real people's jobs and livelihoods across South Australia and Victoria, and the industrial base of our country, are being cast to the wind, and we have a member from New South Wales joking around like it is some fanciful argument. We have a government that have not done any modelling about the impacts of this. They have seemingly taken the decision on an ideological whim. They have promised that help is on its way, yet we know that their first package has already been spent and their second package is a long way short of $100 million. It is actually $10 million a year for South Australia over four years.

One must reflect on the enormous damage that has been done in South Australia, my home state, in my home town and in Victoria. Thousands of people are being made unemployed. Thousands of component workers are being made unemployed. I notice the government's shipbuilding plan has some genuflection about re-employing displaced automotive workers in the shipbuilding yards, but people need a trade plus at least another year on top of that in qualifications to work on the blue-collar side, and similar time at university to work on the white-collar side.

I am just wondering: what plans does this government have? Could the minister—I have asked this question in this place before—possibly enlighten us as to what specifically is going to be done for South Australian industry and for the workers who are going to lose their jobs? Is anything being done to link the job outcomes of those people with the very small things the government is doing? What is being done? How many workers are expected to be displaced? What is being done to help them? What is the government's plan for this area? What is its plan for South Australia? What is its plan for Victoria? What is its plan for manufacturing in the western suburbs of Sydney? If the minister could enlighten us on this, it would help the House, and I would stop having to ask this question year after year. We should remember that we are perilously close to the closure date in October, when thousands of people will lose their jobs and when this government's chicanery and lack of planning will become readily apparent, I fear.

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