Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am always happy to have a frank and open discussion with Senator Mason, and we have done so on many occasions. But at least Senator Mason did not blame the workers—and at least I give him some credit for that—unlike most of his colleagues we have heard, including Senator Ronaldson earlier.

He did acknowledge that there are many factors that are putting pressure on the manufacturing industry, such as economies of scale, the high Australian dollar and some of the stiff competition we are receiving from other countries. No-one has suggested, and certainly the opposition has never suggested, that these are not challenging issues. But the fact is that those opposite are the government. They have an obligation to put in place policy settings that support manufacturing in this country. They simply cannot take the view, as Senator Ronaldson seemed to do, that the strategy is to run up the white flag—be surrender monkeys and have no policy.

Senator Ronaldson is actually the minister representing the industry minister in this place and in his 20-minute contribution he did not talk about one positive thing that this government intended to do in the manufacturing industry. Not one. He did not talk about one plan, he did not talk about one policy response, he did not talk about any vision and he did not talk about a single proposal. And we can only conclude on this side, and I think it has been borne out by many of the comments, that the government simply does not seem to care.

One of the things that Senator Ronaldson harped upon was the need to have consistent policy settings for this industry. Well, the industry has a consistent policy setting right now from this government, and that is no policy. That is the consistent policy setting this government is offering the manufacturing industry—to have none. I do not think that is what industry is looking for. I do not think that is what the Australian people nor the people who rely on the manufacturing sector directly or indirectly are looking for. It is certainly not what we are looking for. We believe this government needs to do better. It actually needs to do the hard work and develop an industry policy and deliver consistent policy settings for the future.

But they also say: 'We haven't been in government very long. These things are inevitable. What could we do?' Let us go back: when Sophie Mirabella was first appointed as the manufacturing shadow minister many years ago that is what started to send alarm bells through the industry. She announced initially that there would be a review of car industry assistance. It then developed further to where they actually got to the position of saying that they would cut $500 million of assistance to the manufacturing industry, in the vehicle industry in particular. That is the sort of thing that started to send shockwaves through the manufacturing industry, and through the car and vehicle industry in particular.

Even Blind Freddy realised over the last few years that the most likely outcome of the election that was just held was going to be a change of government. Everyone understood that. While we were hoping and trying our best to turn those views around, certainly industries would have been looking very closely at the coalition policies, because those policies would become the policies of the new government. Of course, they knew very clearly through their discussions with the then opposition and now government that they were serious about removing support for the vehicle industry. So it is no wonder that plans started to be made for their response to those policy settings and that gutting of the support for that industry.

I think what it really says—and Senator Xenophon made reference to this—is that there are simply too many people in the government who have this flat-earth policy about economic rationalism, who think all industries need to stand on their own two feet and who do not realise that every industry does not exist in a critical mass situation that supports other industries and that other industries might feed off them. That is because they have their economists and they do not actually understand how things work on the ground in reality. They fail to understand that the vehicle industry provides a critical mass at a number of different levels. It provides a critical mass at the R&D level. In fact, the vehicle industry was contributing $700 million every year to R&D investment. That did not all just end up back in the vehicle industry. A lot of that R&D then spun off into component manufacturing and into other industries, like aerospace and robotics and even shipbuilding and many other manufacturing industries. If you take that $700 million out of the R&D economy in manufacturing you hurt all of manufacturing—not just the vehicle industry, you hurt it all.

The vehicle industry also trains very highly skilled workers. It has state-of-the-art plants. We are training people in this country with skills which they would never get trained in anywhere else, and of course those skills then feed components suppliers and other industries. Of course, that is going to be gone now. So other industries that may have been viable for the future because they could rely on a steady supply of highly skilled workers—skills that were imported into this country as well—are not going to have those available for them.

Let us look at robotics as an example. The vehicle industry has some of the most sophisticated robotics of anywhere in the world. Of course, they introduce them here and they train people in how to program them, how to manufacture them, how to maintain them and how to use them. Those skills and that technology are then readily transferable to other industries. And if you take that away, if you want to come here and set up a plant that is going to require a high level of robotics, and yet there is no skilled workforce—there is no other critical mass of robotics in this industry—then you are likely to look elsewhere.

We were one of the 13 advanced economies that could actually design, plan, build, manufacture and produce in its totality a car from nothing to rolling off the production line—although now there will only be 12 once we are gone. Only 13 economies could do that. It is a huge advantage economically to be able to do it. It gives us so many skills that, as I said, flow on around the whole of the manufacturing sector. So it is not just about the vehicle industry.

Of course it was a massive co-investment. The government of the day, and then opposition, used to talk about industry welfare. But for every dollar that was invested by the government we got many, many times the return on investment from those vehicle companies—investment that secured industry, secured good jobs and secured the supply industry and many other industries, and provided them with skills and technology and R&D. That will be very sadly missed.

They did not need to go. When a multinational company is in Australia, and you have the Treasurer of this country goading them into leaving, in the most reckless way, what do you say if you are a multinational? 'If the government doesn't want us here, and is challenging us to leave'—the likely outcome of that is that they will leave, and that is exactly what has happened. Holden had said previously, under our government, that they intended to stay here for the long term. The policy settings we had in place would have kept them here for the long term. So what happened? An Abbott government happened: an Abbott government that sent clear signals to the manufacturing industry, to Holden in particular, that they were not welcome here—'We do not want you here.' Of course Toyota was at all times watching that. And Toyota had a very different business model—mainly exports. Again, in challenging times. But Holden leaves and we get back to that economies-of-scale argument. Suppliers, who often supplied all vehicle companies—as well as other companies—all of a sudden were getting into a situation where they may themselves not be viable. Them not being viable then put extra pressure on Toyota being viable.

All this happened because of an Abbott government. This industry survived the global financial crisis but it could not survive the election of an Abbott government. I think in the long term that this is a decision that people will look back on and say: what a reckless government this was in goading this huge company that provided so many jobs and so many skills into leaving this country, which then had the flow-on effects for Toyota too.

The automotive industry is, as I said, of immense strategic, scientific and economic importance to our nation—and it is now at its end thanks to this government. It did directly employ 50,000 Australian workers and another 200,000 jobs relied on businesses created by the auto industry. The second part of the resolution here also asks the government to release the plans they have for those people—and, of course, there is deathly silence. There is no plan. There is nothing they can say about it. The Minister representing the Minister for Industry here did not even go near that, did not even address any of those issues. There was just deathly silence.

Senator Ronaldson talked a lot about internal issues within the Labor Party. He even went and quoted Mark Latham. As if those 200,000 people who relied on this industry care about that. There may be some people who care about it, and have some interest in that, but let me tell you: most people in Australia do not care about that. What they do care about is what is going to happen to their future and what is going to happen to their kids' futures. Where are these good, high-skilled manufacturing jobs going to come from in the future now that this government has sabotaged the vehicle industry?

And what do we hear from the government? Just personal attacks on Senator Carr, personal attacks on other senators and attacks on the previous government—as if they are still in opposition saying, 'No, no, no', as they did over the last six years. They did not need a plan to say 'no' in opposition but, now they are in government, we expect more than simply saying no—saying no to the vehicle industry, saying no to having an industry plan, saying no to a plan for those people who are going to be displaced through this tragic process.

Again, there was no need at all for this to have ever happened. This was a $21.5 billion industry. The previous government took us through one of the worst global economic meltdowns since the 1920s Depression and got this country through as one of the few that did not go into recession—one of the few that kept unemployment relatively low and one of the few that was then positioned, as we come out of the global financial crisis, to take advantage of our non-recession period and low unemployment. But it looks like that is being completely sabotaged by this government.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics have just released their unemployment figure for January, and what do we find? The jobless rate has now shot up to six per cent and is now at its highest level in a decade. In net terms 3,700 jobs were lost during the month of January, but the real stories are even worse than those figures indicate. In fact, 7,100 full-time jobs were removed from the economy during this month while 3,400 part-time jobs were added. So the real impact of those figures is significantly worse than they indicate.

The coalition government are not just vandalising our nation's industrial capacity; they are destroying our consumer confidence in the process. Westpac's recently released monthly unemployment expectations subindex also rose by 2.3 per cent. What did Westpac's senior economist Justin Smirk have to say about these figures today? He said: 'Households are clearly nervous about jobs again. Recent press on Holden, SPC, Qantas and now Toyota would not have helped.' Of course it has not helped. This government is failing to act even when their own members are calling for action.

What did we hear from Senator Ronaldson? Instead of talking about the plan this government might have to address these shutdowns he simply wanted to blame working people and unions. One of the things that rang true for all of us here when we heard that rhetoric—that nonsense—was, finally, what was said by Dr Sharman Stone. She is a member of the government—a lower house member representing those workers at SPC. When Mr Abbott and others were besmirching the reputation of the workers and the unions she called it for what it was—and that was an absolute lie. She has belled the cat on their strategy.

Their strategy is to blame everyone else. They blame the now opposition. They blame working people. They blame unions. But they do not blame their own actions of goading Holden to leave this country. They do not blame their own actions of having a vacuous industry policy, no response to what is happening in the economy and no care for those working people and their futures. They simply seem not to care.

Representatives of the AMWU from the shipbuilding industry were up here earlier in the week. They are facing their own challenges, particularly with the pipeline of orders. We are now entering into a stage where there will be a period of time when there is no work in those industries. It is called 'death valley'. If we lose the skills from those industries will we ever be able to ramp up again? Once you lose a skills base—once you lose a critical mass—you lose the capacity to ramp up quickly and efficiently to build ships. What did we find? While those union representatives tried to get appointments with the finance minister, the industry minister, the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and with a number of other ministers they either got no response or were told those ministers were simply too busy.

That is in contrast to the welcome mat that was out to these very same people prior to the election, when their views were being sought and seriously considered. Now they are in government those ministers do not want to hear the union representatives' views. They do not want to hear of the issues confronting another major industry in this country. Without proper government consideration, proper government planning and a proper government response, the shipbuilding industry could go the way of the vehicle industry. I think it is an absolute tragedy that this government has presided over what has happened in the vehicle industry. It did not need to happen. This government is responsible for its starting to happen. This government is responsible for goading them out and for taking away the assistance. They stand condemned for that. (Time expired)