Aussie auto industry ignored

The automotive industry has been ignored by a draft report into a post-COVID-19 reboot of Australian manufacturing commissioned by the federal government.

The report, prepared by the manufacturing taskforce of the newly-formed National COVID-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC), focusses on a dramatic expansion of the gas industry underwritten by the taxpayer.

It also mentions seven manufacturing areas it believes Australia has a “comparative advantage” that should be exploited: Food and agritech, mining and rare earths, energy and renewables, advanced building materials, healthcare and biotech, and space and defence.

Leaked to The Guardian website last week, the report backs investment in gas as “key to driving down electricity cost and improving investment in globally competitive advanced industry”.

The taskforce was chaired by Australian-US dual citizen Andrew Liveris. The former chairman of Dow Chemicals is a board member of both the Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco and oil and gas consultancy Worley and is a friend of US presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

Before the report became public, Liveris made it clear to The Australian Financial Review that the hollowing out of manufacturing would not continue: “Australia drank the free-trade juice and decided that off-shoring was OK. Well, that era is gone.”

Australia’s mass automotive manufacturing industry wound up in 2017 when both Holden and Toyota ceased operations, after Ford stopped car-making in 2016.

Since it was leaked, the report has drawn substantial criticism for its focus on fossil fuels over renewables and also potential conflicts Liveris and NCCC chairman Neville Power have because of their involvement in the gas industry.

Judging by the report’s appendix there was no representative of the Australian automotive sector on the taskforce, among an advisory group or in the long list of contributors acknowledged at the end of the report.

The closest it apparently got to was British industrialist Sanjeev Gupta, who is listed as a contributor and who expressed interest in building electric cars in Adelaide in the old Holden plant in 2018.

Australia’s peak industry organisation representing car-makers, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), confirmed to carsales that it had not been invited to contribute to the taskforce’s considerations.

Auto manufacturing is now a niche industry in Australia. Along with a number of similar but smaller operations, the Walkinshaw Group converts several thousand US pick-up trucks per year from left- to right-hand drive.

Also in Melbourne, Premcar has a deal with Nissan and Herrod Performance with Ford to perform local conversion work, while Brabham is hand-building its low-volume $1.8 million BT62 supercar in Adelaide.

The closest the report got to the automotive field was mentioning lithium-ion batteries, but it did not discuss electric vehicle manufacturing opportunities in Australia.

* We contacted the federal government to clarify if any automotive input was sought for the manufacturing taskforce report and will update this report if appropriate.