G'day all,
Personally, I'm a Holden bloke! But the point remains the same.
I've been watching that documentary about John Howard and Menzies. I'm reminded that back when the FX Holden came out it was a thing of national pride. We could produce a car on our own. Not only that but soon after we proved we could do stuff on the scale of the snowy mountains scheme. The worlds people wanted to be here. We were proving to ourselves that we had grown up as a nation.
I get the ideology that says that vehicle manufacturing is commercial and must stand on its own two feet without tariffs or government intervention. Unfortunately this logic is completely undone if we spent a massive (billions and billions) of dollars to position a submarine contract in south Aus specifically to offset the downturn caused by the collapse of vehicle manufacturing. Might as well have supported the car industry instead. And this doesn't help the folks in Broadmeadows etc either.
I heard a statistic this morning that one third of folks already laid off were unemployed with nothing on the horizon. Heartfelt thoughts to them.
Vale the Austalian vehicle industry and best wishes to those involved
