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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) (14:43): Supplementary question: given that the Premier says that it is extremely difficult to make that analysis of what number of jobs will be lost across the entire manufacturing sector here in South Australia, would it be fair to assume, though, that if a quarter of the jobs at Holden are gone a quarter of the 16,000 jobs that he's repeatedly referred to—4,000 jobs—are in jeopardy because of this decision?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:44): Not necessarily, because I think there's a tipping point where some of these organisations without a principal contractor won't be able to sustain themselves. A number of these businesses actually get business from a range of other sectors other than the automotive sector. In fact, that's the very work that we are undertaking now.

If the honourable member was serious about informing himself about these matters he would be aware that even Holden themselves received an enormous shock during the global financial crisis when they found that around the world those component suppliers that were solely reliant upon General Motors almost all fell over when General Motors had to essentially scale back its operations. It found that a precarious position to be in, so it has rethought its global component supply strategy, wanting to make sure that it deals with strong partners that have a diversified customer base. If 90 per cent of your work is with Holden's and Holden's drops off, you can kill your component supplier in a way that means that they are not there next time when you want to expand.

That is part of the work that we have been proposing to do and are doing with Holden's, through the working party, of actually trying to diversify and strengthen the component supply chain so that they are able to be resilient in the face of very fluctuating economic conditions. Remember what we are facing here. We have an extraordinarily high Australian dollar. Other countries are essentially engaged in a currency war which is having a dramatic effect on South Australian manufacturers. What that means is it is even more urgent to carry out the work that we set out in the economic statement to diversify our state into an advanced manufacturing future.

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