Ned K.
In October this year, Toyota announced sackings of 100 workers. The reason given was that its export orders to the Middle East have declined. Toyota is by far the largest exporter of vehicles from Australia compared to General Motors and Ford.
Only a
week before the latest sackings in the car industry were announced, the new
Liberal Government Minister Ian MacFarlane said that any further government
assistance to the car manufacturers had to be on the condition that they can
export a high percentage of the cars they produce here.
Allan
Kohler in the Business Spectator
section of The Australian on Thursday
17 October demonstrated that the Middle East is one of the few areas in the
world where there are no tariffs in place on imported cars, and this is why so
many companies like Toyota attempt to export cars there.
He points
out that the growth markets for car sales are in the short to medium term in
Asia, but this is where tariffs and barriers to imported cars are the highest,
despite a variety of so-called ‘free trade’ arrangements.
So Ian
MacFarlane’s condition of high export focus before any commitment to further
funding of the car industry here is virtually the death of the industry here so
long as the industry remains in the hands of the multinational car companies
and large component suppliers.
Government pours in the dollars, car multinationals
continue to cut jobs and destroy the locally based car industry
It is
quite staggering the amount of government financial assistance to the car
multinationals, even in recent years, let alone since they set up in Australia
around World War 2 and after.
(And this has become part of a global pattern as
the giant multinational car companies play national governments off against
each other: at the end of September Ford succeeded in extorting $70.9 million from the
Ontario provincial government, and $71.6 million from the Canadian federal
government to upgrade its Oakville assembly plant.)
Gideon
Haigh, better known for his writing on the imperialist originated game of
cricket, has written an excellent book, End
Of The Road? on the car industry in Australia which exposes the staggering
amounts of money handed to these multinationals with no conditions of
government control or ownership attached.
For
example General Motors received the following amounts of money from the
tax-payers between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2012:
$2,174,947,531
under various restructuring schemes –
Automotive Competitive and Investment Scheme (ACIS) - $1,503,038,035
Automotive Transformation Scheme from 2011 - $150,008,171
Green Car Innovation Fund (GCIF) FROM 2008 - $188,817,598
This year
more money was thrown at General Motors and more promised by both federal and
state governments as General Motors sacked 500 workers, forced reduction in
real wages and conditions of workers in a new Enterprise Agreement and then
arrogantly announced that its future commitment to manufacture cars in
Australia was dependent on more government money!
Yet while
crying out for government money during these years, what was happening to
General Motors’ car production here and jobs?
In 2005
there were three production shifts per day and 900 cars produced per day at
General Motors’ Elizabeth plant according to Haigh, and 60,000 a year were
exported.
In 2012,
400 a day on one shift and only 14,100 exported.
However
General Motors, Ford and Toyota reduced the range of cars made here at a time
when people’s choice of cars to purchase skyrocketed. In 2012, there were sixty
car brands and 360 models on sale in Australia from competing multinational car
companies, including competition from General Motors, Ford and Toyota plants
importing into Australia.
Sports
Utility Vehicles (SUVs) are a case in point. There are seventy seven models
available on the market in Australia and until recently only one (Ford
Territory) made here.
The point
is that the decision of what type of car is made in Australia is not made by
the Australian government, Australian people or even the local management of
these car multinationals. The decisions are made by the headquarters of these
multinational companies based on their interests which are driven by profit
maximisation on a world scale.
Australian
car production represents 0.02% of world-wide car production and so we do not
feature too highly in the car multinationals’ plans.
The people demand action
While approximately
90% of cars purchased in Australia are imported, this is not because the
Australian people do not support an Australian based car industry. It is the
fact that successive governments have allowed the car multinationals to dictate
what is made here and what they can import that has led to the destruction of
the industry and thousands of full time jobs.
The
people in places like Geelong where Ford is based, and Elizabeth where General
Motors is still a dominant employer with 1750 workers, make enormous sacrifices
regarding reduced wage demands, and acceptance of job cuts in the hope of
keeping the industry in their areas for their communities. But they are tired
of such sacrifices being a one-way street.
Increasingly voices in the community demand a government takeover of the
car industry in Australia. They support the building of environmentally
sustainable cars for Australian conditions. They are ready to make them. They have
demanded elected governments of the day make it happen.
SA
Premier Weatherill at least had the decency to explain his opposition to a state
government buyout of the car industry: the owners would not consent to the sale
of the Australian operations and the consequent access by government to its
global intellectual property and other business resources; acquiring and
operating a company like General Motors would leave the government with
insufficient funds for other social and economic investments; and it would
expose the government to unnecessary risks.
Regrettably,
such timidity is the best that can be expected through the parliamentary
process.
It may be
some way down the track but eventually the workers and their community allies
will have to force the hand of government, seize the assets their labour has
produced, and place their manufacturing capacity at the disposal of society.
We need
not be shy about the type of social system needed to make this happen.
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