19 August 2009 in Speeches
Speech to the House, AUTOMOTIVE TRANSFORMATION SCHEME BILL 2009, 19 August 2009
Mr BRIGGS (Mayo) (1:52 PM) —I also rise to speak on the Automotive Transformation Scheme Bill 2009 and a related bill. I follow the member representing the Electrical Trades Union in this place and I acknowledge that that member has had a bit to do with the car industry over time. He mentioned some of that at the beginning of his speech, and I am sure he also had ETU members that he used to service in the car industry as well, being, of course, the member who represents that union for those on the other side.
I rise today as a member from South Australia to talk about what is an important industry in our state, although in Mayo we do not have a car manufacturing plant or component sector. The member at the table, the member for Boothby, used to have in his electorate a more significant car manufacturing and components industry and would be able to talk about his experience on this issue, I am sure, a lot more thoroughly than I could.
However, what I want to say about this bill is that I think it is important that this country starts to take stock of how much money we are actually spending on this industry and whether we are getting the value for money that we expect. Prior to my position here, I had some involvement in the former Prime Minister’s office, looking after the issues related to this industry. It is a complicated industry that employs many Australians. It is an industry which has a significant structural basis, particularly in Melbourne and Adelaide. In the northern part of Adelaide, the Holden plant and the related component sector employ many thousands of people and it is a very important part of that economy. However, the question that we must ask ourselves—given that this government has taken us from a position of having no debt 18 months ago, zero debt, to a position where we have $315 billion of debt, 15 per cent of our GDP, all lined up—is whether these are some of the issues that we need to start considering going forward. We need to ask whether we are, as a country, able to afford this amount of money. It is $3.4 billion over a decade, not including the $1.3 billion for the so-called green car fund, which is a fascinating concept they have established, a very clever hollowmen type term. You have to wonder whether we can as a country afford that $5 billion over 10 years, given that we have significant debt to pay off, substantial debt, all because of the reckless spending of this government—ill-thought-through decisions to hand out $900 cheques, which is borrowed money, to everybody. That will genuinely impact on our ability as a country to respond to these sorts of industries with such large amounts of money.
I come from South Australia, and, over the last 10 years, South Australia has restructured the base of its economy quite substantially, largely due to the hard work done by Dean Brown, John Olsen, Rob Lucas and Stephen Baker, who had to rescue the South Australian economy and budget from the disaster that was left by the South Australian Labor government in the early nineties. We restructured so that it was no longer ‘a rust bucket economy’—as it was formerly described. It is now a highly skilled economy. We have light manufacturing. We are focusing on the defence industry. Obviously our wine industry is the best in the world. We no longer rely wholly and solely on this industry to be our No. 1 mainstay, as we did in the past. That was, as I said, because of the work of the South Australian Liberal government, in conjunction with the work of the former Howard government.
So, in relation to this bill, the opposition has moved several amendments on the amount of money spent, trying to put into this bill a better outlook or overview of how the money is being spent, trying to get some value and trying to ensure that the Australian taxpayer—including people in the gallery today, who I am sure care deeply about the spending of over $4 billion on this industry—is getting value for money, because there have been questions over time, I think, about the value we have got from the support to this industry.
It is important that we ensure the money that we are spending on this type of industry assistance is worthwhile, because it will be a difficult issue for us going forward. Higher taxes will no doubt be part of the strategy to pay back the large level of debt left by this Labor government to future generations. We have seen over the last couple of days in this place that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister will not rule out new taxes to pay off the very large debt that we are building up.
Mr Albanese interjecting—
Mr BRIGGS —There’s Albo—Gollum. He is chatting away.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. BC Scott)—The Leader of the House will not interject while out of his seat.
Mr BRIGGS —Mr Albanese has a lot of familiarity with this industry, of course, because of the AMWU, the union that he is from—although not so much in New South Wales, because there is not so much of a car industry there.
We do have to put some analysis into the amount of money we are spending on this industry. Because of the large amount of debt that this government has built up, we will not be able to spend like we have in the past, when we managed the economy properly, when we managed the economy well. Let us not forget that we left this government 18 months ago with no net debt. Now we find we have $315 billion in debt, and it will reduce the amount of money that can be spent on industries such as this. It will mean higher taxes. It will mean a very difficult time ahead for the Australian economy.
This is a large amount of money. That is why we have moved these amendments: to have some better analysis of government spending on this. So it is very disappointing that Senator Carr has walked away from the negotiations we were undertaking with him on this bill. We wanted to have strong analysis of how this money was being spent to ensure it was being spent well. I think there is great concern in Australia, and certainly in the South Australian constituency of mine, that this money is not just wasted and that we are getting value for money. There certainly has been a perception in the past that the amount of money being spent on this industry has not been worthwhile or has not achieved what it was setting out to achieve. There is the analysis by the Productivity Commission that suggests that it costs $300,000 per job in this industry, which is a large amount of money. It is an extraordinary amount of money per job to be supported.
Mr Speaker, I will get us through the remaining 30 seconds before the beginning of question time, by reminding the House and everyone present that one of the reasons we need to do this is the debt that has been raised by this government, which is the highest level of debt we have ever seen, all because of the ill-thought-through, badly planned spending decisions of this government.
The SPEAKER —Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.