Trade minister Craig Emerson has said that Australia would continue to make cars, after Ford’s announcement last week that it would end local production in 2016.
Emerson, speaking on ABC TV’s Insiders program, said that the industry employed 50,000 people in car and car component manufacturing. He also ruled out increasing tariffs temporarily, which has been suggested by some within his own party, including MP Nick Champion and Senator Doug Cameron.
“The contrast is with the Coalition which would take $0.5 billion – $0.5 billion out of the industry next year if they were elected – which was to pull away about half of all the support the industry gets,” said Emerson.
He also stressed that the automotive industry was valuable for the engineering strength that it nurtured.
“When you talk to people such as Boeing, which is a very high tech aeronautical engineering firm, that provides components for the Dreamliner, talk to the CEO there and he will tell you that the majority of their workers were trained in the automotive industry,” Emerson said.
“So it’s a training ground for developing the skills for manufacturing in this country.”
The Coalition has criticised the support given to Ford by the government in the form of a $34 million cash injection in January 2012. It was reported in Saturday’s Australian Financial Review that federal industry minister Greg Combet knew that Ford planned to leave Australia when the money was approved.
“Mr Combet must explain immediately to the taxpayers of Australia why he approved $34 million worth of grants to Ford when he knew they were going to close in 2016,” said opposition industry spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella in a statement.
In an interview on Channel 10 yesterday, Mirabella repeated the opposition’s pledge to make funding more transparent, reduce subsidies by $500 million, and to refer them to the Productivity Commission.
‘‘If companies don’t qualify once the new funding model is set up, I’m not going to do special deals behind closed doors because it makes a mockery of having benchmarks that companies need to reach in order to be granted the privilege of taxpayers’ dollars,’’ said Mirabella.