E&OE
Senator Ryan:
I am going to commence my response to Senator Carr’s contribution by stating my own personal view and the feelings I have for the workers, who are legitimately concerned about their futures. I say this…
Senator Farrell:
…well, protect them!
Ryan:
…and before you open your mouth, Senator Farrell, I say this because I saw it in my own family. I say this because I saw my father lose his job when the first phase of the automotive industry went in the John Button car plan, when truck manufacturing closed down in Australia. Thousands of people blue collar workers lost their jobs, never to get meaningful employment again. I saw that in my own family.
So before people assume that there is a motive or a lack of compassion in this, I urge them to consider the experiences that people all around this building may have, despite the legitimate disagreements.
This is a very important debate, but it is not a debate that can be based on deceitful statistics. This was covered in Senate estimates in great detail. To say there are 200,000 jobs dependent on automotive manufacturing in Australia is wrong absolutely and utterly wrong, admitted by the Department of Industry in Senate estimates and admitted by the industry when it is put to them. There are just under 50,000 people who work in the automotive assembling, manufacturing and components industry in Australia. The difference between those two numbers is explained when you consider the entire automotive sector, which includes people that sell and service a Mazda or a VW or another imported vehicle. It is not fair to somehow count their jobs in the Australian…
Senator Kim Carr:
…so how many is it?
Ryan:
I just said, Senator Carr, it is just under 50,000, but…
Carr:
…that is direct; how many indirect?
Ryan:
That also includes those people who work for the aftermarket auto components sector who do not get a single cent of subsidy or protection under the industry policy of the previous government, so let’s base this on the true statistics.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Hawke and Keating government floating the dollar. I am amazed that I have Senator Farrell yell out that I should be protecting jobs. I am amazed that I constantly hear from members opposite that it is the role of government, indeed that it is even possible for government, to somehow de-globalise the Australian economy. Thirty years ago today, with the support of the opposition, Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating floated the dollar. That is a decision that I think was the right one to take for this country. That is a decision that was one of the stages that opened up our economy to the globe; that provided thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of job opportunities for my generation, which was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of a globalised Australia. I saw tens of thousands of blue-collar men and women, often from the TCF industry, who were exposed to that competition and lost their jobs. For people to say that those decisions were not important, that a globalised economy is not important, denies the sacrifice that was made by those people who saw their livelihoods disappear but who, through a number of government policies, Liberal and Labor, saw the future for their kids of which I am one be a lot more prosperous.
Since the 1991 recession that we had to have, brought upon us by Paul Keating’s policies and interest rates that are unimaginable in today’s era, we have had a period of virtually uninterrupted economic growth. We have seen three economic global downturns that Australia has avoided in the main though not entirely; there are pockets of disadvantage in Australia, socioeconomic, regional and spread around our cities so I do not discount any of that. But we have seen a period of growth that has avoided all the tragedy of mass unemployment, economic opportunities lost and social dislocation that we see in the closed economies of Europe and the indebted economies of North America and Europe.
This anniversary is important, as I said. And the reason Senator Carr’s contribution is misleading people into believing that the government can protect their jobs and it not have a cost to other people in the economy is that it backtracks on what I know will be an aberration in the history of the Labor Party, which was a party committed to openness. Hawke and Keating were not a turning point for you; they were an aberration. What we are hearing now are throwback economic policies, misleading people that somehow you can just write a cheque big enough and that that does not have cost.
Senator Carr, the question that has never been answered is: what is your limit? When you were industry minister you made promises and the rug was pulled out from underneath you. Overnight, hundreds of millions of dollars were pulled out from promises you made to the industry. You know what is more destructive than a promise, even if it is not great policy? It is a promise that is broken, a promise that is pulled out from under their feet, like the Green Car Innovation Fund was which provoked the heads of Ford and GM to say, ‘This is bringing an element of sovereign risk to car investment in Australia.’ That is what Labor policies involved: promises that not only were not delivered, that not only were misleading people into thinking that somehow protection was a future pathway for Australia, but that then had the rug pulled out from underneath them, making Australia an even more uncertain place to invest.
Nineteen months ago in this place we had then Prime Minister Gillard, Premier Jay Weatherill and the car companies say that the car industry, and Holden in particular, had been saved. It had been saved because the government had done a deal. Yet, like every promise made by the previous government, it was a deal that did not deliver because, 15 months later, apparently another deal needs to be made. So for Senator Carr, despite Holden having said for months leading up to the election that their future here was not certain, to accuse the opposition of looking for an alibi is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts, and no one believes him because of his own record.
What we have to ask ourselves is: what is the limit of our contribution? Last week the Prime Minister made it clear there was no more money. But the important point is that all the money in the existing program is not being used. Under the existing program, you sorry, Mr Acting Deputy President, through you Senator Carr took some of that unused money and wrote a cheque to Ford which was meant to keep them in Australia, and 12 months later they announced they are shutting up shop in Broadmeadows and Geelong.
Carr:
That is rubbish.
Ryan:
All this money was being reallocated without selection criteria. There was not a Productivity Commission inquiry. There was a Labor mates inquiry, by getting former Labor Premier Steve Bracks to deliver what the government wanted, which was an excuse to write a cheque. But all those promises have been completely unfulfilled because we are back here at the same place again. Then we have Labor saying that we need to subsidise for the injury that Labor policies themselves caused. Senator Carr interjected during question time that the carbon tax was not worth $400 a car. His own department actually tried to assert it was under $100.
Carr:
Fifty, get it right!
Ryan:
They did assert it was $50, but that is if you do not count the cost on the people that make the parts that put the car together.
Carr:
Rubbish.
Ryan:
So if you don’t count the panels that come in, if you don’t count the windows that come in, if you don’t count the seatbelts and everything else you have to put a car together and if you don’t count the costs on the suppliers, it is only $50? That is insane economic policy absolutely insane. The carbon tax costs $400 a car.
Carr:
Wrong.
Ryan:
Four hundred dollars a car. Senator Carr and the Labor Party are arguing for a subsidy, yet they come in here and refuse to even allow a vote on repealing this lead in the saddlebags of the Australian car industry. Even if you disagree about the number, surely getting rid of the burden will help. But, no, that is not good enough. Over my five and a half years in this place I have seen a number of proposals come in here for subsidies. There was even the idea of the Rudd bank; there have been Senator Carr’s constant promises that you know are never going to be delivered; there has been money flowing, then money being taken away. I have not heard of promises to save thousands of jobs in tourism that might have gone in Queensland or, indeed, in parts of regional and coastal Victoria, because Labor only wants to protect some jobs. We have a responsibility to the entire community. First and foremost, this economy as, indeed, the Hawke and Keating government started arguing 30 years ago today needs to be exposed to global competition and you need to have a balanced budget. You need to get your fiscal house in order.
So for Senator Carr to try to confect outrage, to mislead people into saying that somehow it is only in the last 12 or 13 weeks that the car industry in Australia has had challenges, and then, most of all, to try to lead them into believing that he could have saved them is to ignore his record. It was on his watch that Ford went after he gave them taxpayers’ money and there is nothing that Senator Carr can say now that can correct his record where he saw two car companies close and others threaten to.
(ENDS)