Bulletin from Abroad Bernard Lagan in Sydney
Ripple effects of Australian carmakers slamming their doors shut could cost up to 200,000 jobs.
Once, flung from a sinking relationship with a blazing Italian, I bought a maltreated Falcon ute with the notion of fleeing across Australia. The ute looked how I felt and, besides, its bench seat had no room for women and thoughts of a future that might include children.
In truth, it barely left inner Sydney; it was adopted by a new girlfriend – a magazine editor who drove it enthusiastically to her city office each day. We married, and children came along, as did a proper car. But the ute stayed; I enjoyed its knockabout Australian character as the roads filled with shiny Japanese utes and high-riding Korean station wagons.
It was probably a Hutt Valley upbringing that sowed a fondness for locally produced cars. The Hutt was New Zealand’s Motown, and Ford and General Motors had car assembly plants there. Chryslers came from nearby Porirua.
You knew whose dad workedforFord or GM by the car in the driveway. The hotted-up car culture was vibrant – parts were plentiful. We mocked the council-employed traffic cops driving enfeebled British Hillmans.
The northern suburbs of
Melbourne where Ford has made cars for the past 90 years mirror – on a far grander scale – the Hutt Valley before the Lange Labour Government killed off the New Zealand car industry. Now, some 30 years on, Australia’s is also at the gallows. Ford shut its Melbourne factory this month. Next year, General Motors will close its Holden plant in South Australia and Toyota will follow in Melbourne – leaving no carmaker.
Although Australia is spending tens of millions of dollars to keep some local car-parts makers in business, the effects of the pullout will be a poleaxe to manufacturing.Australia’s National Institute for Economic and Industry Research predicts the loss of jobs won’t be limited to the 45,000 workers the carmakers employed. The study said the ripple effects could cost up 200,000 jobs.
Australia has never before witnessed what happens when an entire industry shuts down, tossing tens of thousands out of work. The closest employment earthquake occurred in Wollongong, the steel city south of Sydney, that went from 22,000 steel industry jobs in the late 1980s to about 3000 now. It was in the doldrums for 20 years. Many former steel workers never got a pay packet again.
Roger Douglas, David Lange’s finance minister, was tooling around Wellington in a sharp Alfa Romeo in the mid-1980s when he called time on New Zealand’s car industry by removing barriers to importing masses of cheaper used cars. He argued that the money people saved on car purchases would be better spent elsewhere, aiding the entire economy.
It was just one aspect of the tidal waves of economic change unleashed by Douglas but among the least controversial of his reforms. New Zealanders were largely happy to gain access to a huge range of imported cars at cheaper prices. The new car assembly plants soon shut.
The car industry endured in Australia because, unlike New Zealand’s, it is a vast, complex manufacturing industry – not just an assembler. Until the arrival of
Tony Abbott, governments feared the political fallout of its loss, despite the billions taxpayers have shovelled to the carmakers for the past 20 years to keep them.
Making cars has kept generations employed in Melbourne’s north and in outer Adelaide, where Holdens are built in hardscrabble Elizabeth. Yet few other Australians are lamenting the end of their car industry; they dumped the big Falcons and Commodores for more efficient models long ago.
Last year, that old ute was rearended and written off. A sensible little Renault took its place.
But now and then, I check out the diminishing ads for old Fords.
The Hutt was NZ’s Motown. You knew whose dad worked for Ford or GM by the car in the driveway.