yep another 2 thousand semi skilled workers thrown on the scrap heap with little chance of a job , all so they can save a few $ by using cheap asian labour to assemble them . Didnt mind taking the govts subsidy though did they?
tony9,
Oct 4, 4:05pm
So you think the govt should be subsidising blacksmiths and horse cart builders, even though the greater population has no need for them?
This has been signalled by the Aus govt for decades and means millions of car buyers in Aus will pay less for their cars as the import tariffs are removed.
lk104,
Oct 4, 4:24pm
So you just think they should just continue losing money to protect the workers? I'm sure the shareholders in Toyota are not that charitable.
tamarillo,
Oct 4, 5:01pm
Car tariffs into Aus have been getting lowered for decades and are already at just 5% tops with lower ones with countries they have deals like Thailand. And they've been running imported next to Aus made side by side with no competitive advantage for locals so I wouldn't expect any reduction at all.
tamarillo,
Oct 4, 5:02pm
Agreed, thoigh maybe note that Toyota say they only pulled out because with ford and Gm gone the local supply market wouldn't be big enough for economy of scale. They said they'd have stayed otherwise.
mrcat1,
Oct 4, 7:46pm
Just means the crowd making the Corolla dash's will have to make a lot more Ram dash's and components for Walkinshaw racing.
sw20,
Oct 4, 8:21pm
Every car factory employee was being subsided by the Aussie taxpayer to the tune of $50k AUD a year.
socram,
Oct 7, 7:10pm
What was the productivity of the employees like, compared to other overseas factories? We have heard tales of the Unions in Australia not exactly being forward thinking, so was that an issue? Ditto for Ford and Holden.
The Brit car industry workers seem to have a far better attitude these days, having well and truly buried the horrors of the 1970's.
andy61,
Oct 8, 3:11pm
The Corolla sold in Australia have been assembled in Japan for many years, however the Camrys were Aussie made.
headcat,
Oct 8, 4:57pm
Millions may be an exaggeration. But even if the cars cost less how are these customers going to pay for them without a job?
mimik3,
Oct 8, 5:07pm
For Ford and Holden it was that the vehicles where orphans and didn't fit into the global scene, the unions and the workers in both those companies did a lot to reduce excess fat they were very lean producers of vehicles. As for Toyota, it came down to economy of scale. There is a very good article on British Leyland in Wikipedia that details the failings and the collapse of the UK home grown cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland
gsimpson,
Oct 8, 7:44pm
NZ coped with the loss of it's car industry. In fact we ended up with better cars at a cheaper price.
franc123,
Dec 30, 3:08pm
It was ridiculous to keep subsidising and protecting these industries to the extent they had to be, the bottom line was they were two American corporations and one Jap one trying to sell large cars in a small market which if anything is more urbanised than NZ is, that fewer and fewer people were wanting to buy. The factories were mostly too old and it wasn't feasible to upgrade them and SUV's and crew cap pickups built cheap and in very high volume in new facilities in SE Asia have vacuumed up all the buyers for larger cars anyway.
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