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19/12/14
16:52
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Originally posted by moorookamick
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By the end of 2017 Australian car manufacturing by Toyota, Ford & GM
will be wound up costing the economy 10,000 jobs and much needed exports.
The question we should be asking, however is at what cost to the taxpayer/consumer?
On the 10th December 2013 the Australian reported that:
"TAXPAYERS are covering about $2500 of the cost of each Australian-made car with subsidies equivalent to as much as $50,000 for every employee directly involved in their manufacture.
Subsidies to the industry have averaged about $550 million a year for the past six years, not including the benefit of tariffs and the luxury car tax, according to the Productivity Commission."
While auto employees, 3 multinational auto manufacturers and their local suppliers were benefiting
from this considerable level of corporate welfare, the taxpayers , many of whom could not afford to buy a new car,
were paying through the nose. Even with the taxpayer throwing over half a billion dollars a year at the
industry, new car buyers were and are paying some of the world's highest prices for new and used cars.
This could be remedied by permitting the importation of used fuel efficient Japanese cars and recognising
Japanese safety and emission standards to permit this. Once we have no local car manufacturing to
protect, the Government's objective should be to phase out fuel guzzlers, provide affordable cars to
consumers and reduce the annual petroleum products import bill.
The Government has finally been compelled to remove the 5% import duty on new cars & 4x4s due to
free trade deals with Japan & Korea which saves the new car buyer about $1000 on a $30K new vehicle.
Although there are some concerns about loosing 10,000 jobs at a time of rising unemployment it is
useful to remember that we still have an average 80,000 457 visa guest workers since the GFC which was
intended as a temporary measure due to the mining boom. Perhaps many of the redundant auto workers together
with some of our 6.3% unemployed could be skilled-up to replace some of the 457 visa workers.
If we believe that the auto manufactures were loosing money manufacturing here , then we can reasonably expect that
when they replace the local product with imported models that these three multinationals will make more profit
and, consequently, pay more tax. It seemed ridiculous for these three manufacturers turning over $20 billion +
a year and paying little or no tax.
And finally there was the WW2 argument that in case of another world we'd be left without vehicles and spare parts.
This argument is redundant because another WW would likely to be short and nuclear. And besides, our dependancy
on imported petroleum is by far a more serious threat to our national security.
So in summary, the auto manufacturing industry has been an expensive exercise particularly for the average
taxpayer post the Button Plan and we should only consider State support to kick off industries that are Australian owned and have a reasonable chance of being economically viable over the longer term and labour intensive car
manufacturing has certainly not one of those.
Moorookamick
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How can a plant building falcons or commodores for $38k whilst paying its staff $80k a year compete with a similar show in Thailand building BMW 3 series @ $70k paying their staff a mere fraction of that wage ? . Are we too well payed to compete in this type of manufacturing .....don't get me started on ship building....
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