Four Corners: Apr 14

Monday’s Four Corners features a report by Stephen Long on our declining car manufacturing industry -including Britain’s industry U-Turn.

Australians love their cars. And for much of the past six decades the cars they’ve loved most have been home-grown. In that time, Australia has been one of a select group of countries with the capacity to design, engineer and build its own cars. For 60 years that capacity has been a cornerstone of the country’s industrial capacity. Now all that is about to change.

When the new Coalition Government made it clear it wasn’t prepared to spend more money assisting the car industry, the big manufacturers Holden and Toyota said goodbye. This week on Four Corners, reporter Stephen Long looks at the impact as the car industry heads to the end of the road.

Long finds that for some, this represents a triumph of good policy with limited fallout:

“This form of restructuring will have quite profound effects on individual regions… but not necessarily have a significant effect on the economy as a whole.” Bill Scales, Former Head Automotive Industry Authority

Others see it as the road to potential economic ruin – a decision which, when taken to its logical conclusion, would make the economy vulnerable to external shocks:

“Australia will start to become a third world country in its living standard.” Professor Göran Roos, Advanced Manufacturing Council

Travelling to key industrial centres, Long reveals startling new research describing the likely impact of the car industry’s demise. He talks to the workers who’ve already been pushed onto the unemployment lines and he goes into the factories of car-part makers desperately seeking new markets outside the automotive industry.

Respected industry experts warn that although manufacturers know they need to stop relying on making car components, as few as ten per cent might survive the transition.

Four Corners also looks at Britain’s response to a failing car industry. Initially, like Australia, Britain took the view it didn’t need car manufacturing. The Global Financial Crisis changed all that. Realising the folly of simply relying on service industries to supply jobs, the Government backed car makers in a way that has turned them into the country’s biggest export sector.

Monday 14th April at 8.30pm on ABC1.