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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-04-09 Daily Xml
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GM HOLDEN

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:23): My question is to the Premier. Why is it that the federal government signed a contract for its $215 million contribution to the co-investment package with Holden's and the Victorian government signed a contract for its contribution, but a year after the announcement, our Premier, a former lawyer, had not signed a contract for the $50 million commitment that he had made on behalf of South Australia?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:23): The first thing you should do is check with your friends in Victoria, because Mr Devereux told me today that there has been no signed agreement between the Victorian government and General Motors.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Did you check?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Well, Mr Devereux doesn't think there is an agreement. In fact—

Ms Chapman: Well, he's reliable. You just told us.

The SPEAKER: Will the Premier be seated? I warn the deputy leader for the first time. We do not want to see an undignified exit of the deputy leader today. Premier.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: We will see who is accurate about that particular matter, but can I say this: one of the reasons I flew to Detroit was to make sure that I conducted the negotiations on behalf of the South Australian government, not the commonwealth or the Victorian government, and there are elements in our agreement—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: I know that perhaps the preferred approach of the opposition leader might have been simply to roll over. My proposition was that I wanted to see safeguards in the agreement for South Australians. I wanted to see that there were commitments to not only ensuring that the South Australian Holden operation was insinuated into the global supply chain, on the basis that there is no future for us simply supplying vehicles for the domestic market. There is no future in that. We have to be part of a global platform, which means that we are insinuated into that global supply chain.

Further, I wanted to make sure that our component suppliers, who necessarily were going to be affected by the changes that were occurring in Holden, had some clear process of transition to this new global architecture, because unless our component manufacturers were efficient and capable they would not find a place in Holden's global supply chain. So, we entered into a specific agreement, which was a material term, with the executives at General Motors Holden about ensuring a working party was set up to transition those suppliers into that global supply chain.

This was going to be an extensive exercise. It would involve lifting the capacity of existing component suppliers. It might actually involve transitioning them out of the manufacturing sector if they couldn't reach the standards that Holden needed, but Holden was going to work with us on a working party for that purpose. I also raised the question of new and enhanced ways of supporting workers who could actually find other roles for themselves in the manufacturing sector when inevitably there would be a smaller but more secure manufacturing sector.

These were the essential terms of the matters we put into the agreement, so we had a much more detailed agreement that we were promoting on behalf of South Australia, because we have an ambition to keep a manufacturing sector in South Australia and we also have an ambition to not lose the skills and capabilities that exist in this sector so that we can transition to an advanced manufacturing future. We took advice on the approach that we took from Professor Göran Roos, and these are all set out—these are no secrets—in the advanced manufacturing strategy and the economic statement.

There is a clear continuum between what we have set out, what we said we would do and what we have done, and we advanced those things in negotiations. We have reached, on all the fundamental matters, a clear understanding with General Motors. I understand what they advance, but it is absolutely clear. We have an exchange of correspondence.

Mr MARSHALL: A supplementary?

The SPEAKER: Well, if indeed it is a supplementary.

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