GM Holden Workers

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:05): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Automotive Transformation questions regarding Holden's closure, and specifically the impact on the workforce there.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: The government has previously announced various programs to help affected Holden workers transition to other jobs and industries after the unfortunate closure, on 20 October this year, of the Holden plant. Recently, an additional $600,000 joint funding boost was given to the automotive worker support scheme to support those people who are yet to secure work. In recent times, some development projects have announced the desire to employ former Holden workers, which is obviously a good thing. For example, there is the $5.5 million Prince George Plaza upgrade and the government IT contract with CSC, which has indicated the creation of approximately 400 new jobs as well as worker retraining for Holden employees.

Additionally, the government has announced the northern economic hub, which was to receive $25 million in funding and was expected to bring some 25,000 new jobs by 2025. Those are in the public domain and the ones we know about. My questions are for a little bit more information. I appreciate that the factory has just closed and so some of the information may not yet be at hand. If that's the case, I ask the government to provide it when it does come to hand. My first question is: how many of the workers who were made redundant on 20 October have been able to secure work, or look like they are in the process of securing work? Does the government have any figures on that at this stage?

How many former Holden staffers have secured a job after engagement with the Automotive Workers in Transition Program and the Growth Fund Skills and Training Initiative, and how many still remain unemployed? Are those statistics yet available? How many jobs from the proposed developments in the northern region have been realised, and how many will be realised by the end of the year? Is there a quota of former Holden employees that must be met in these northern contracts? If not, what guarantees do we have that Holden workers will be considered for these new northern contracts? Finally, what further plans, if any, does the government have to ensure these workers find suitable employment quickly and, in the meantime, have access to Centrelink and other appropriate benefits?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (15:08): I thank the honourable member for his question and his interest in this area. He has asked a number of questions about the automotive industry and the transition that's occurring with Holden's closure just a couple of weeks ago. I might answer generally, which I think encompasses most of what you have asked for. I will say from the outset that I don't have any statistics from the 950-odd workers who finished at Holden just a couple of weeks ago.

Over the last couple of years, Holden has run a transition centre at the Holden plant at Elizabeth. I have visited the transition centre a number of times, and I have to say that Holden, to their credit, have been doing a good job with their workers. One of the ways in which I am reasonably satisfied that they have been doing the right thing in terms of the training, the transition, the job services with their workers, is that the union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, which represents workers there, has said rather positive things to me about how Holden is going in terms of helping their workers find new jobs. In my experience, if unions are not happy with the employers they don't hold back on letting people know about it. So, from everything I have seen and from the reports, Holden is working well with their workers.

I think Holden learned a lesson about how to provide these services from Mitsubishi a decade ago. Holden has funded training, careers counselling, helping with resumes, that sort of work for their own workers. We have been mirroring what Holden has been doing for the auto supply chain, which is, of course, another very critical element of this transition. The sorts of services that Holden has been providing to their workers through their transition centre, the state government, through the $7.3 million Automotive Workers in Transition Program, has been providing to workers in the supply chain.

In addition to the career advice, the career counselling, the funds for training for the auto supply chain, the government has also been helping the supply chain companies. A bit over two years ago, about 74 tier 1 and tier 2 supply chain companies were identified that supplied not just Holden but also Ford and Toyota, primarily in northern Adelaide but also in western and southern Adelaide. Helping those companies diversify has been a key element of the government's strategy to help workers with employment. If a number of those supply chain companies can survive and offer ongoing jobs there will be fewer people looking for work and needing those career transition services.

About two years ago, when the automotive transition team went out to those supply chain companies, I think the stats were that somewhere around 80 per cent of those companies intended, at that time, that they were just going to shut up shop once Holden finished. They ranged from big multinational companies like Futuris, Hero Tech, SMR to much smaller, family-owned engineering, metal fabrication, plastic moulding or blowing companies. Once Holden closed, about 80 per cent of those companies, across the range, were intending that they would also close.

With a lot of work and with, I think, $11.63 million initially, supplemented in the last budget by another $5 million for the Automotive Supplier Diversification Program, today, with Holden closed, about three-quarters of those supply chain companies are still around. It has been a quite remarkable turnaround over those last couple of years, particularly with the smaller companies which, as small businesses generally do, have been concentrating on the day-to-day manufacturing of what they make for the supply chain and have not really had the opportunity to lift their head above the horizon to think about doing something different.

So, with a lot of work from the state government, with funding for retooling, for looking at diversification, a lot of those companies—and I have been to many over the last couple of years but particularly in the last few months—that have typically been between 90 to 100 per cent reliant on auto for their revenue have diversified away, from areas like medical devices, food manufacturing, and particularly food packaging, into the defence area, for aftermarket auto parts, for export parts, for services and goods for the mining industry. That has certainly been a key plank of the government's strategy to help some of those companies survive.

There are quite a lot of them that have downsized and there are even some, like Trident Plastics in the western suburbs, that have grown as they diversified out of supplying the auto companies and into other areas. One example that stood out was Jano from Sonnex Engineering, which is right next to the Holden plant at Elizabeth. When the Premier and I visited him, in the last couple of months, he was quite emotional talking about the fact that he had thought government had no role in business, but once the auto transition team came out to visit him he realised that working with government could provide opportunities.

They were in despair. His company was going to fold, his family company that had been here since he emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, but working with government they are now expanding. They are taking on Holden workers. The day we visited him, a few weeks ago, he was interviewing for new positions, interviewing Holden workers to go into his expanding company.

There is a combination on the supply side, with government programs to help companies stay in business with that Automotive Workers in Transition Program for supply chain workers to retrain for other industries and some into other manufacturing areas, and Holden with their own workforce.

In terms of some statistics, there are about 950 people whose jobs finished when the last red Commodore rolled off the production line at the end of October. But for the year or two years preceding that, there were about 1,000 employees who left Holden as Holden re-rated their Commodore line but also ceased their Cruze line.

Holden's own statistics show that 84 or 85 per cent of workers had an employment outcome from those who had left in the couple of years preceding. In that employment outcome, somewhere around 78 per cent of those had found a job after leaving Holden. Certainly, my experience from talking to people at Holden and those who have recently left Holden is that the skills that they have are highly regarded in many other areas.

Micro-X is a new medical devices company that is manufacturing down in Tonsley, in the southern suburbs, one of the world's first portable X-ray machines. I think they are up to about their eighth or ninth ex-Holden worker being employed there. That has been repeated quite a lot. Once a company takes on one Holden worker, they often take on more and more Holden workers, after they understand the very, very precise skill set that people who have come out of the auto industry have.

Another thing we have found is that, when a team leader from the Holden plant goes to work somewhere, he often takes a lot of his former team with him over time as jobs become available, having worked with them and knowing the skill sets that they have.

I am pretty sure we will not have figures about those 950-odd who left recently, but I will liaise with Holden to see when figures can become available for a refresh of about the same number who have left over the last couple of years, and I will provide them to the honourable member when I am able to.