Sophie Mirabella has launched an all out attack on the Federal government following the announcement by Ford Victoria of the 440 job losses blaming the carbon tax and an instable government who keeps “changing the goal posts” for industry in Australia.
However, the Victorian and Federal governments are defending their decision to give Ford a multi-million-dollar bailout earlier this year, despite the car maker’s plans to axe hundreds of workers.
Ms Mirabella told Neos Kosmos that the opposition “criticised the grant in January because the Prime Minister did not base that on any transparent criteria”.
“[The Prime Minister] did not ask for any job guarantees and the funding bailout in January followed 1.4 billion of broken funding promises to the industry, 460 million imposition of the carbon tax and this has raised great uncertainty and instability in the industry.”
Further to this, Ms Mirabella added that what the industry needs is “certainty of government policy”. She said Ford is undergoing challenging market conditions and they really need stability of government policy.
“The government has promised them the earth, the moon and the stars at the election then cut funding significantly then has tried to patch up its mistakes and it makes a very challenging situation more difficult for industry.”
She says that industry is suffering from a “crisis of confidence” and that they don’t know what economic environment they are going to be operating in because “the government keeps changing it’s mind”.
When asked how the carbon tax has impacted on industry in Australia, Ms Mirabella, said that it just added another burden to the industry.
“They are facing significant challenges and they have been hampered in their ability to deal with to deal with these challenging situations by the government changing its goal posts.
“We heard in the middle of last year the head of Holden say this changing of goal posts, what it does to multinational companies for the first time it raised the problem of sovereign risk of investing in Australia,” she said.
In response, Ms Mirabella said the Liberal want to support the car industry and said there is a better way to do it.
“We want to get the Productivity Commission and the industry together with government to determine clear transparent criteria and benchmarks for funding so that the companies know what they need to do in order to get that funding and the tax payers know what is required of a private company before they are granted the privilege of tax payers dollars.”
