Bill Shorten says car industry collapse showed ‘shoulder-shrugging fatalism’

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/shorten-says-car-industry-collapse-dangerous

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Bill Shorten says the demise of the Australian car industry represents “dangerous de-industrialisation” and the Abbott government should not have responded with “shoulder-shrugging fatalism” about jobs coming and going.

In a speech attempting to fit his “fight for Aussie jobs” campaign with the economic reform tradition of the Hawke-Keating era, Shorten began to sketch a role for government in maintaining manufacturing employment by spending money on training, research and innovation.

Labor has claimed the Abbott government is responsible for the death of the car industry because it proposed cuts to government assistance and refused to guarantee that the payments would continue in the long term.

But in the speech to the Melbourne press club, Shorten also said: “We believe that government assistance for industries should be the exception, not the rule.”

Shorten said assistance should be provided only to industries that “adapt to change and embrace innovation”.

“We believe government has a moral obligation to keep people in work. In fact, the death of the Australian auto industry is a major backward step – a dangerous de-industrialisation,” Shorten said.

“People laud the Hawke-Keating era as a time when Labor took hard decisions that delivered generational dividends. These reforms to markets, regulation, trade and enterprise bargaining freed up the Australian economy. Twenty years on, the tough decisions and strategic reform we need hinge on a new national commitment to science and innovation.”

He said Australia should neither “romanticise” manufacturing nor accept the notion that it “somehow doesn’t matter any more or is doomed.”

Shorten has been campaigning on manufacturing job losses. But the most recent Nielsen poll shows his personal approval ratings falling. In November 51% approved of his performance but this fell to 40% in the February poll – the same proportion who disapproved of the job he was doing.

Tony Abbott has said the government will reveal assistance for workers and industries in Victoria and South Australia hit by recent announcements of factory closures, including by Toyota, Holden and Alcoa. He has said there will be more announcements in the May budget.