Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a very grave issue for the constituents of Corangamite, the broader Geelong community and the Australian manufacturing community. I rise to request that the member for Corangamite issue a correction and apologise to this House and to the people of Corangamite for grossly misleading them—we are not allowed to say 'lying' in this House, so I will say 'grossly misleading'. Having repeatedly misled locals about coalition policies regarding the car industry in recent years, this time he has gone a step too far. He has gone as far as to make quotes and then to say clearly that that is what Mr Abbott was referring to. The made-up quotes are an absolute misrepresentation and totally inaccurate. These fabrications show the extent that Mr Cheeseman and the Labor Party will go to to peddle their dishonesty about the coalition's position.

We remember that they have form on this. At the last election the Labor Party said that the coalition's announced policy to cut the Green Car Innovation Fund by just under $300 million would hurt Geelong. But what happened? After the election the Labor Party itself—as soon as the election was out of the way—cut around $850 million remaining in the fund and axed the fund altogether. What is worse, adding to this, their broken promises to the car industry—after the election—were $1.4 billion, and of course the mother of all broken promises, the carbon tax, is going to cut $460 million out of the auto sector. Under Labor we have lost one manufacturing job every 23 minutes. It is no wonder that even Ian Jones, the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union Vehicle Division national secretary, said in the past that Julia Gillard 'does not understand manufacturing's importance to the economy'.

The Prime Minister's former senior adviser Nick Reece belled the cat in an opinion piece recently, saying that Ford would close 'its local manufacturing operations in 2016'. The Labor Party is ignoring the plight of manufacturing, of the auto sector, and what does Mr Cheeseman say when confronted with job losses at Ford after the government gave a behind-the-door closed deal of $34 million to Ford? The Prime Minister said it would create 300 new jobs. A month after the last instalment was given to Ford, 330 Ford workers were sacked, and all Mr Cheeseman could say is, 'Ford needed to make adjustments to its workforce depending on sales, and that is entirely appropriate.' Come clean, Mr Cheeseman, about Labor's damage to the auto sector and apologise to Mr Abbott. (Time expired)