LABOR’S RECORD A CAR WRECK
13-January-2012
Cabinet discard Kim Carr’s latest outburst in the media today, calling on the Coalition to save blue collar jobs in the motor vehicle industry, is the height of hypocrisy given Labor’s nearly $2 billion in broken promises to that industry.
It was only a year ago that Labor made savage cuts to car industry funding by shredding:
· The Green Car Innovation Fund;
· Cash for Clunkers; and the
· LPG Vehicle Scheme.
To make matters worse, the decision to decimate these programs was a unilateral made in the dark of night by the Prime Minister without any warning to the car industry.
And now the sector is also going to be slugged by up to $46 million annually in additional costs due to the carbon tax.
Labor’s litany of car industry policy failures and unaccountable and unsustainable spending provides no certainty or long term outcomes for the car industry or the Australian public. Its failed approach cannot be continued.
Car manufacturers now talk about sovereign risk in Australia when considering local investment decisions.
In the past three-and-a-half years, just under 130,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost and manufacturing activity is contracting almost every month under Labor.
Labor thinks so little of manufacturing that they have relegated the portfolio to the outer ministry and out of Cabinet for the first time in living memory.
The Coalition’s industry policy will be released in good time before the next election and, as has been the case in the past, will provide certainty and value to the Australian public.