When this column first appeared in The Land in August 1990, I was waxing lyrical about the unveiling at Ag-Quip of a new Holden ute.
‘There it stood (I wrote), on the Namoi Valley Motors stand – the back-in-production Holden Ute. After six years of deprivation, Australian farmers are to be able once more to buy the vehicle that for so many years was their traditional conveyance’.
How times have changed. Not only has the Holden ute long since ceased to be the Aussie farmer’s conveyance of choice, but as of last Friday we no longer have a Holden factory building local motor cars. Coming just a fortnight after the shutdown of Toyota’s local factory, and a year after Ford ceased local manufacture, last week’s exit of the maker – after 69 years - of “Australia’s own car” is a body blow not only to the nation’s economy, and also to our self-esteem.
How can it be that Australia - of all countries, with its vast distances and reliance on motor transport – is unable to sustain a car manufacturing sector? After all, we have one of the highest rates of per capita car ownership in the world, with more than 90 per cent of households boasting a car (and in many cases, several).
Yet despite our love affair with the motor, Australia last year (before the final three factory closures) came in at number 32 in the global rankings of car makers, trailing even Slovakia and Morocco.
A big part of the problem is that our local car market, though relatively small by world standards, is contested by more than 60 different brands – more than any other country except China. The tragedy of it is that if only Holden or Ford had elected to stay, then Toyota (according to its boss) would have stayed too. But without the ongoing presence of two car makers, there was going to be insufficient production scale to sustain a local parts industry.
Now the curtain has fallen, and most of the 40,000-odd workers for whom the car industry provided a skilled career will be looking for another job. Many will be disappointed. The blame game for the demise of our car industry has been under way ever since Mitsubishi – the first of the four local car makers then extant - bailed out in 2008.
Blame has been variously assigned to our high wage levels, the removal of import tariffs, the tight-fistedness of Tony Abbott’s Coalition government, and the car makers’ misreading of market trends.
Probably it was a combination of all four, but it’s worth noting that wage levels are just as high or higher in other countries still making cars, and car manufacture in most (if not all) countries relies on government subsidies.
It’s a question of whether the nation derives more benefit from the government (i.e. taxpayers) subsidising a domestic car industry or, say, a South Australian shipyard building hugely expensive submarines.
I know where I’d prefer to see my tax dollars go.
