The death of the Australian car manufacturing industry

Ford, Holden, Toyota. 

In the space of the last year, all of these foreign owned car manufacturers have announced their intention to cease manufacturing on Australian soil. 

Blind Freddy could have seen this coming from a mile away, even if the subsidies that have supposedly been keeping these jobs in Australia for the last couple of decades were put on the table again, there is a fair chance all three companies could have decided to leave anyhow.

On that note, it is an opportune time to reflect on the massive amount of material support these companies have gleaned off the Australian people over the years. Massive amounts of taxpayer subsidies have been pumped into these foreign auto conglomerates over the years, reaching a critical mass over the last ten years. All three of these companies were given huge tracts of land to build their factories on. 

The key thing to note here is that ever since cars have been manufactured on a large scale in Australia, beginning with the Chifley/General Motors agreement of the late 1940s, a system has been developed in which the losses of the industry and a huge lump of the costs have been burdened by the Australian people, whilst the profits have flowed overseas. 

The demise of the car industry presents a fork in the road and also a glimmering opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past and build a cornerstone for an independent future. Those massive tracts of land granted to Ford, GM and Toyota and the equipment within it? Let's nationalise it all. We paid for it, let's take it back. Let's retool them to manufacture the things we need, low emission cars, new trains and trams and the like.

The workers that currently look like they're going to tossed out on their arse by the foreign capitalists would retain their jobs, as well as thousands more being created. We'd be able to define the future of transport in this country, by building the things we need desperately, not simply building what some fat cat in Detroit thinks will stuff his back pocket. Most tellingly, any profit made would not only stay in the country, but be further re invested into creating a better Australia for us all.

Enough!

When Hawke and Keating began to tell us about the wonderful opportunities that globalisation and economic
liberalisation would give us, one of the main selling points was the promise that we would become ‘the clever
country’ or ‘the knowledge nation’.That their economic programme would provide future generations with plentiful educational and training opportunities that would lead to equally plentiful highly skilled jobs. The way that the last twenty five years have unfolded has proven this to be a lie. Not only have our manufacturing and other kindred industries been stripped bare and our farmers sold out, but the very jobs we and our children were promised, the ‘clever country’ jobs, are now being cut.

Telstra recently announced that it is axing 255 highly skilled ‘clever country’ jobs and outsourcing them
to India. Adding insult to injury, the last act of these workers as Telstra employees would be to train the
new workforce. These sackings were seen as emblematic of the lies that we have been told about economic
liberalisation. In response to the wave of outrageous sackings, a community campaign called Enough! has been launched in defence of workers’ jobs, against casualisation, and to halt the march of privatisation and off-shoring of jobs.

A rally was held outside the Telstra building on Collins Street on the 25th of January. The lobby of the building was occupied by 25 union members and supporters relaying their position to the public and handing out leaflets in order to gain publicity before a two week vigil in Collins Square starting on the 6th of February.
The vigil was an unprecedented success, with the Enough! message receiving a great response from workers
who would normally not be exposed to such explanations of our current crisis.

The causes of the job losses at Telstra were linked to the 1000 jobs being cut at ANZ (right next door), and the 600 jobs in danger at Alcoa, amongst many other dire forecasts. Significantly, the problems being discussed were presented as a matter of national sovereignty and the need for Australians to have a much greater say in the way the country is run, rather than the current sham democracy we have in which many of the critical decisions are made in overseas boardrooms.

The only opposition to the campaign, tellingly, came from a small group within the left itself. These ‘super-
revolutionary’ groups commented that this was a campaign built on petit-bourgeois nationalism, and playing
to xenophobic sentiments. Such ideas are completely detached from reality, and the experiences on the ground during this part of the campaign proved that. Gradually the working people of Australia are learning that the issues that Enough! is raising are due to a complete lack of national sovereignty, and that there is no way these decisions are in the interests of the people. This was something that came across in conversations with working people during the two week vigil.

A further rally was organised outside the Telstra shop in the city on the 17th of February with speakers from
the CEPU and Enough! as well as Greens MP, Adam Bandt. The most heartening thing about the rally was the amount of Telstra and ANZ workers who found out about the rally during the earlier vigil and came along to make a stand. Different proposals for action were presented at the rally. There was strong support for taking the campaign to work places and communities where working people face the attacks on jobs and their livelihoods by the multi-nationals and imperialism. It is a material fact that most parliamentarians are lackeys of the imperialists and their agents in Australia. Parliament is there to administer imperialist rule in Australia. That’s why it will not look after the true interests of the people. Building a mass campaign on the ground is primary.

It was stated by Enough! that they would continue to build a movement to achieve greater sovereignty, greater
rights and a fairer, more democratic society for Australian workers, thus attempting to channel the voices of the voiceless. In the face of ever growing attacks on the working class by imperialism, emboldened by every job they manage to slash, every condition they cut and every promise they are allowed to renege on, the need for initiatives like this and the building of a stronger people’s movement just continues to grow.