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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-06-19 Daily Xml
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GM HOLDEN

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (14:19): My question is to the Premier. As he indicated yesterday that he won't lobby the Prime Minister to abolish the carbon tax because Holden has not 'raised the carbon tax as an issue of concern', will the Premier now lobby the Prime Minister to abolish that carbon tax, given that Holden has today raised the carbon tax as an issue of concern, not only for their own business directly but for their suppliers in the SME sector?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:20): I don't accept the proposition that you advance. We have been in regular conversations with Holden. They have never asked me to advance a proposition with the commonwealth about the carbon tax. It was no part of our discussions which led to the agreement that we reached and it has been no part of the renegotiation since. Properly understood, Mr Devereaux's remarks are that the carbon tax, while making a contribution to their input costs is, in the scheme of things, a small proposition compared with the overall support that they are requiring from the commonwealth government in relation to the future of their operations here in this country. We need to put this in some sort of context.

Mrs Redmond: Yes, we've got the context.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Exactly. There is not one country in the world that manufactures cars that does not support its car manufacturing industry. They either support it directly through subsidies in the way in which the Australian government has chosen, they support it indirectly through tariffs, or they use other indirect measures through currency revaluation. All of those are particular mechanisms, and the Australian government has chosen the most transparent method, and that is subsidies, so you can see exactly what you get. An effective tariff which would be across all cars would provide a more blunt instrument for protecting industry.

Subsidies allow one to achieve commitments in return for the direct subsidies that are given. That is the mechanism that the South Australian government used when it sat down with Detroit and negotiated the package of measures for the reinvestment in Holden's in South Australia. The reason that this has all been thrown in the air is that the underpinnings of our arrangement have been pulled out by the federal Coalition. Our negotiations were negotiated against a backdrop of $2 billion of commonwealth assistance—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —that you are putting in jeopardy.

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