Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This document is the Productivity Commission Inquiry Report No. 70 into Australia's automotive manufacturing industry. I heard my colleague Senator Carr take apart this report in his previous contribution to the Senate. I think I am one of the few senators who has actually worked in Australia's automotive manufacturing industry. I worked in the components sector and I worked in the car industry itself. As a migrant coming to Australia, these were the first jobs I had. They were secure jobs. They were skilled jobs. They were jobs that allowed me to start my life with my family in Australia. Yet we have the coalition taking advice from the Productivity Commission—flawed advice, as Senator Carr outlined, and advice that is based on economic ideology, economic arguments that are discounted everywhere else in the world—that you should not have a car industry because it places pressure on the cost of living for ordinary Australians and it diminishes the market operating effectively. These are nonsense arguments.

These arguments that used to go around and that the Productivity Commission still uses are not used anywhere else in the world by modern economies. It is clear that in the UK, as a Senator Carr indicated, with government support, government intervention and government arguments for strong, well-paid skilled jobs, they have got a thriving car industry. If you can have a thriving vehicle industry in the UK, you can certainly have a thriving vehicle industry in Australia. But the Productivity Commission, with its bias, with its lack of understanding about how the real world works, sets about coming up with these reports that simply mean that we do not have an opportunity to continue to provide decent jobs for Australians and for migrant Australians who are coming here to start off in skilled jobs with decent wages. What is the proposal we have from the coalition? They actually chased these multinational companies out of Australia. They dare Holden, they dare Toyota to leave Australia. Then they go, 'Oh dear, they went.' It is the absolute worst piece of industry policy or industry politics that you would ever see anywhere in the world. All around the world advanced economies want to maintain a strong vehicle industry. Why do they do that? Because these are skilled jobs. They provide multiplier jobs through the economy. They have got some of the strongest research and development. Yet this Productivity Commission, full of bean counters and boffins who have never had a real job in their life, comes out and destroys jobs in the Australian economy at the behest of this government.

I am appalled when I see the South Australian senators get up at question time to ask their Dorothy Dixer questions given to them by the minister. When are they going to ask questions about South Australian jobs? When are the Victorian members going to ask about Victorian manufacturing jobs? When is the coalition going to stand up for jobs for Australian workers? I do not see that happening at all—because we have got a government that is mean, nasty and tricky. This is a government that came to power on the basis of lies. Did they tell the South Australian car manufacturing workers or the Victorian car manufacturing workers that they would chase the companies that they work for out of Australia? No, they did not. They lied to the Australian car industry and they lied to the car industry workers, as they have lied on a whole range of issues. They have lied on health, they have lied on education and they have lied to the Australian public on a range of issues that are becoming clear now. This a government that is reprehensible and a government that the Australian people deserve to get rid of. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.