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

On 18 August I joined the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, and the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, in celebrating the seven millionth Holden produced in Australia. It was great to see another Commodore roll off the line at Elizabeth with about 100 or so workers, many of whom reside in my electorate of Wakefield. It is a great company with a great workforce and it is committed to producing quality Australian-made cars for the export and domestic market. To produce seven million cars is a major achievement, and I have no doubt there will be millions more.

There are, however, great challenges to the car manufacturing industry in Australia, and some of those challenges are outlined in the Bracks review. They include things like the appreciation of the Australian dollar, higher fuel costs, the collapse of the WTO Doha Round of trade negotiations, a fragmenting domestic market with changing consumer preferences, competition for future investment from other car-producing countries and, importantly, the impact of climate change and the future of carbon reduction programs. The Bracks review has done a good job but, like all reviews, it does not get some things completely correct. In particular, its recommendation on the continued reduction of tariffs in 2010 should, I think, be rejected. The timetable is just far too short given the circumstances faced by the industry. As the review notes, Australian tariffs are already low by international standards and Australia has the fifth most open market in the world for automotive vehicles. I, like many of my electors, think there is no compelling economic reason to rush to reduce tariffs further and, if anything, the circumstances the industry and the country face compel a much longer timetable for tariff reduction. In a perfect world, we would have totally free trade between nations but, as we live in an imperfect world, we should be practical about such matters.