Automotive jobs heading for the edge of the cliff   

Date
    November 13, 2015
    The Age




    Who killed the car industry?   


 

Forty thousand Victorian workers face unemployment as the car industry "falls of a cliff" with an urgent call for new funding to help auto suppliers transition to new businesses.


The Australian car industry is coming to the end of the road.   

Victoria and South Australia will be hardest hit and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said  suppliers need urgent help.   

"My concern is too many of them will run out of runway by the end of 2017," Mr Weatherill told Fairfax Media.

Premier Weatherill said the transition time out of auto manufacturing was too short and should have been at least a decade.


Industry minister Christopher Pyne visits Trajan Scientific and Medical as the government faces pressure to support the car industry.

"We could have morphed off into an industry which is now rapidly changing … we are already seeing in South Australia driverless car technology so, it didn't need to fall of the edge of a cliff in the way in which it will and then having to rebuild something from the ashes," he said.   

In the coming year Holden will close its engine production plant in Port Melbourne and Ford expects to cease manufacturing in Geelong and Broadmeadows by October. Toyota's Altona plant and Holden's Adelaide manufacturing plant will close by the end of 2017.   

On Friday, Victoria's industry minister Lily D'Ambrosio​ and Federal industry minister Christopher Pyne visited Trajan Scientific and Medical in Ringwood, which has received government funding to help invest in new machinery for its advanced manufacturing business.


Industry minister Christopher Pyne with Victorian industry minister Lily D'Ambrosio on a visit to Trajan Scientific and Medical Australia which has received government funding to support advanced manufacturing and transition away from auto manufacturing.

The funding was part of the Next Generation Manufacturing Investment Programme, which is part of a $155 million government package to support advanced manufacturing and transition from auto manufacturing. 

Premier Weatherill and Ms D'Ambrosio say it is not enough money between two states.

The federal government had committed $1 billion from 2015-2020 through its Automotive Transformation Scheme to help car companies deliver new vehicles.

With the car making sector set to close in 2017, Ms D'Ambrosio believes almost $800 million of that money will go unspent.

Mr Pyne said the Automotive Transformation Scheme is predicated on motor vehicles being built in Australia.

He said with Ford, Holden and Toyota all exiting by 2017/18 "that means the legislative basis for the scheme will come to an end."

He said many suppliers were already diversifying and doing "extremely well".

"There isn't doom and gloom in the automotive component manufacturing sector," he said.

Mr Pyne said Australia is a "high-skilled, high-wage economy".

"The future for those manufacturing industries is to be in advanced manufacturing, high technology, niche markets, exports, competing with the world," he said.

Asked if there would be any more government money to help automotive suppliers diversify, he said: "I've answered the question."   

Ms D'Ambrosio said: "In Victoria it is expected that about 40,000 jobs will go … so it is a very very sobering figure.

"The federal government ought to review the way the Auto Transformation Scheme functions; it was designed for a different time. It was designed for a time before the three major manufacturers were driven from the country frankly," she said.

"That is the fatal flaw of the ATS which effectively means that there will be an underspend of $795 million."

John Smith wrote on Nov 15^th, 2015 at 1:16pm:


Labor was in charge when Mitsubishi/Toyota and Ford decided to stop making cars in Australia.

One minute the lefties are whinging about corporate welfare the next they are whinging when unions killed our car manufacturing.

These lefties seem to whinge without offering solutions.

I doubt there was ever a time when the Australian car industry was viable.

I do not want to see more money wasted on efforts to try and keep it alive.


As for who killed it,,, the coroner would say suicide

And if we paid the car industry subsidies those subsidies created a hell of a lot of economic activity. Boy, will we miss the car makers.

Funny thing is, the $A is now low enough Holden and Toyota could be producing and exporting their heads off.

Stupid bloody abbott and hokey!

The NBN, the real one, would by now be creating jobs to replace car industry jobs but the stupid Libs killed that too!

STUPID STUPID STUPID!

Kat wrote on Nov 15^th, 2015 at 6:04pm:


Actually, our subsidies were among the highest in the world.  But one minute you are complaining AGAINST business subsidies and then demanding more for our most subsidised industry!

In case you hadn't notice, car manufacturing has retreated from a LOT of countries - not just ours. After all, it nearly collapsed in the USA!  GM pulled out of Korea the same day they pulled out of Australia.

Jovial Monk wrote on Nov 15^th, 2015 at 6:12pm:


Let's imagine for a minute that I provide that data for you. What will it change?  You will simply dispute it by either rejecting it entirely or my 're-interpreting' it to mean something else. Look at what you do with opinion polls. You still claim they are 50/50 while every poll shows a widening margin og 53/47 or worse.

Why would anyone show you any facts? Your lack of integrity makes it worthless - like throwing pearls before swine, - and in this case, literally so.

mariacostel wrote on Nov 15^th, 2015 at 6:33pm:

So you're either lying or lazy - which is it?

mariacostel wrote on Nov 15^th, 2015 at 6:11pm:


Rubbish.

But, carry on.