Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The announcement on Tuesday night that the Ford FG Falcon XT has been awarded Best Large Car of 2008, as judged by the nation’s motoring clubs, is just one of several announcements over the last three weeks that have reinvigorated the Geelong manufacturing sector and, more specifically, the Ford Motor Company’s operations in the greater Geelong region. Prior to November this year, a series of announcements by Ford Australia indicated that the company would be seeking to lay-off hundreds of workers over the coming years. But all of this changed on 10 November, when the Prime Minister announced the $6.2 billion A New Car Plan for a Greener Future, designed to assist the Australian automotive industry in becoming a more economically and environmentally sustainable sector by 2020. Based on that announcement and a series of negotiations that followed, we had what was a fantastic announcement by Ford Australia’s CEO, Mr Marin Burela, a Geelong boy who got his start on the Ford shop floor in Geelong some 24 years ago. On 20 November Mr Burela declared that Ford would reverse an earlier decision to cut some 400 jobs and focus on developing a new in-line six-cylinder engine that meets Euro 4 environmental standards, thanks in part to a direct contribution by this federal government of $13 million.

On top of this we had Tuesday night’s announcement by the Australian Automobile Association, the nation’s peak body for the various state and territory based motoring clubs, that the Ford FG Falcon XT swept the field in the large car category, taking out the title of Australia’s Best Large Car. This is a great outcome for Ford and Geelong in a competition that is described as being the nation’s most comprehensive, independent, consumer focused vehicle-testing and awards program.

To suggest that Geelong is a manufacturing town really does not encapsulate the importance of the sector to the region’s prosperity. According to the Geelong Manufacturing Council, the manufacturing sector in Geelong currently employs some 14,000 people across 500 companies, equating to 41 per cent of the region’s employment, and this in turn translates into approximately $500 million in wages for the Geelong community, while the sector accounts for around 51 per cent of the region’s gross domestic product. As we now progress through the first decade of the 21st century, Geelong manufacturing is undergoing something of a renaissance. Recent announcements have included Basell Australia commissioning a $100 million plant upgrade, Blue Circle Southern Cement investing $75 million in its Geelong operations, Axiom Energy investing in a $50 million biodiesel refinery and Shell spending $220 million to increase the production of clean fuels. Also, in a major coup for the region’s information technology sector, Indian computer firm Satyam will invest $75 million in the creation of a 10-hectare research and development facility on the Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus—an investment, it is anticipated, that will create 2,000 jobs over the next eight years.

As Geelong looks to its future, it is this type of investment and industry that can sustain us through the years and decades ahead. Smart, high-tech, highly evolved and environmentally-friendly industry is not only Geelong’s future but also the nation’s and the world’s future. By staying ahead of the curve, by developing and producing the engines, fuels, information technologies and other products that are in demand in a more environmentally aware world, we are positioning Geelong for future growth and future success.

In April 2007 the then opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, said:

... I don’t want to be Prime Minister of a country which doesn’t make things anymore.

Later he went further, adding:

... I believe passionately in an activist industry policy for this country.

This was an underlying commitment that the Labor Party took to the people of Australia in the 2007 election and is absolutely the mantra by which we have conducted ourselves ever since.

This is no more visible than in Geelong. This government, along with state and local governments, has assisted in transitioning our region’s industry to compete in the 21st century through support for individual enterprises and by investing in critical infrastructure. This has aided in establishing Geelong, in my opinion, as the best-connected industrial city in Australia. Links to the national rail grid, the national highway system, a national airport, the Geelong Ring Road and a major industrial seaport are all infrastructure components that will help carry Geelong industry into the future. We are working to develop these further by seeking to upgrade Avalon Airport into an international gateway and creating an intermodal transport hub in the Heales Road industrial precinct.

Geelong absolutely has a future in the manufacturing sector. It lies in creating smart, high-tech products that will meet the needs of an increasingly interconnected and environmentally conscious world and in exploiting our natural and man-made infrastructure. Geelong also has a future in developing and manufacturing automotive components and cars, and the recent announcements and successes of Ford in Geelong are an absolute testament to that.