In October of 2017, the final car rolled out of a local Australian production facility: a Holden VF Commodore. Ford closed up shop a couple of years prior with Toyota not far behind. Today, the country is without an auto industry.
However, the center-left Labor Party has pledged to hit reset on the country’s auto manufacturing sector. According to a report from Wheels on Wednesday, the political party’s leadership wants to restart local production and offered up a $40 million fund to start. Critics already say the sum is peanuts. The other major federal political party, the center-right Liberal National Party, rebuked the opposition’s calls.
The restart of local production would focus on electric cars, per the Labor Party, and would tie into a goal of 50 percent of cars sold nationally to be electric come 2030. The funds promised would begin research and development into how to curate a new industry focused on electric-car design, engineering, and manufacturing.
“You’ve got to have government leadership to be able to take advantage of those new business opportunities that are emerging,” Labor’s Innovation, Industry, Science and Research spokesman Kim Carr, said on the proposal. “We’ve got to make sure that there are blue collar opportunities in terms of meeting the challenges of climate change.”
As for where the funds would come from, the Labor Party promised to “close tax loopholes.”
Holden, Ford, and Toyota still maintain a presence in the country with design studios, though each are national import brands. Holden also operates its Lang Lang proving grounds to hone new Holdens for local roads.
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Source: Wheels
Comments
Have voted for this party last 35 years, this *** clown keeps forgetting the grid can bearly keep up now, with rolling blackouts during summer.
we don’t have the grid to support all these electric cars.
It is almost inconceivable that car manufacturing will restart in Australia. There are a myriad of obstacles including red tape, small market, unions, etc. There are no major car manufacturers that are the least bit interested in manufacturing cars in Australia. The pledge is utter nonsense of the worst political kind.
The labor leader is nothing but a lying snake. Manufacturing of any scale in Australia simply wont happen. Bill Shorten could organis a chook raffle in a pub let alone run a country. God help us if Labor get in.
Very excited about this. What they should have done was make that Jaguar F-Pace looking thing with a Commodore front end that Wheels mag came out with to absolutely crush the competition, but this would be a great consolation prize. Thanks for the local updates about the power grid and political atmosphere down under mates.