Holden: South Australian premier accuses government of having no plan
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Version 0 of 1. The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, expressed deep disquiet after crisis meetings with the prime minister and treasurer over the demise of Holden, saying: “I don’t think they understand what they have done … there is no plan.” Weatherill, whose state will lose 1,600 jobs as a direct result of Holden’s decision to close in 2017 and probably many more through its knock-on effects, asked Tony Abbott and the treasurer, Joe Hockey, for an immediate go-ahead for South Australian infrastructure projects already in the pipeline as part of a long, and expensive, list of measures that might save his state’s economy. And he accused the government of failing to prepare for a decision that it had asked Holden to make. “I don’t think they understand what they have done … I do not think there is an appreciation in Canberra about the enormity of the changes for the South Australian and national economy as a result of this,” Weatherill said. “This is a government that was calling for this decision to be made. You would have thought there would be a plan, but there is no plan. The sense of urgency is completely lacking.” Weatherill said the cost of the bailout packages to South Australia and Victoria would “cost many multiples more than it would have cost the government to keep Holden in Australia”. The Victorian premier, Denis Napthine, who also met Abbott on Thursday, said Victoria would also need “substantial” assistance to retrain the 13,000 workers who would lose their jobs, to create new employment and possibly also to offer more help to the last remaining carmaker in Australia, Toyota. He said he believed Abbott was “aware of the significance of Holden’s decision and its ripple effects”. Several Coalition sources said the decision to refuse any further assistance to Holden had been “mishandled” by the government. Abbott had said earlier on Thursday that his government was unwilling to pay large ongoing subsidies to carmakers, which his own industry minister has conceded were necessary for the industry’s survival. As political debate raged over Holden’s decision to end Australian car manufacturing in 2017, Abbott told parliament: “I refuse to accept that the only way the workers of this country can be successful is with a massive and ongoing government handout. I think the workers of this country are better than that … We have tried throwing money at the motor industry. It just doesn’t work.” Abbott admitted he had not met Holden’s chief executive, Mike Devereux, since he became prime minister, but left talks to his industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, who commissioned an as-yet uncompleted Productivity Commission and asked Holden to delay its decision until next year when the commission had reported and the government could “make an offer”. On Wednesday Hockey demanded an immediate answer from the company and acting prime minister Warren Truss wrote a letter demanding the same. Abbott told his party room the government would not “run down the street waving blank cheques at unprofitable businesses”, unlike Labor who “treats the budget like a trade union slush fund”. But Macfarlane has conceded the car industry would ''collapse entirely'' without continued subsidies and in 2012 said: “If you look across the world almost every government supports its car industry … it's decision time in Australia and there's no middle ground. You either support the companies into manufacturing a new model here or you cut them loose and let them go.'' Napthine said he was in the early stages of discussions with Toyota about its “ambitions to build a new model Camry” and had said Victoria was prepared to offer money for the plan. He said Abbott had given no assurances but “certainly gave an an indication he was prepared to listen with respect to Toyota”. Abbott said it was entirely unreasonable for Labor to suggest the Coalition should have been able to “save” Holden, when a $215m federal grant announced last month by the former Labor government had failed to do so. When that assistance was announced Hockey questioned why the car industry qualified for assistance when other struggling sectors, such as tourism, did not. He said he had "deep, deep reservations" about taxpayers' money going to profitable companies such as GM Holden. “The decision to end manufacturing in Australia reflects the perfect storm of negative influences the automotive industry faces in the country, including the sustained strength of the Australian dollar, high cost of production, small domestic market and arguably the most competitive and fragmented auto market in the world,” GM Holden’s chairman, Dan Akerson, said in a statement announcing the decision on Wednesday. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |