Politicians preying on the parochial

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Buy Australian... That's the solution for the country's auto industry woes, carefully packaged and bundled sound-bite-style, for a populace sick of electioneering just one-day in.

Senator Kim Carr and KRudd are pulling on the parochial heart strings. All that needs to happen, they contend, is for governments, qangos, defence entities, and the like – and by extension, good patriotic Aussie companies – to buy Aussie made cars and the issue of the parlous state of local manufacturing will be fixed.

What rubbish.

Fact is the majority of government and government related businesses already have rigorous 'Buy Australian' policies in place. And many companies voluntarily toe the same line.

The telling fact is such a narrow range of vehicles are now built in Australia that a wide spectrum of vehicle usages is simply not catered for.

Want a light car (around 12% of the total market) – only imports are available. Want a small or medium SUV (17%) – import only. What about a cab chassis ute or 4x4 – import only. Van, people mover, sportscar – same, same same...

Want a small car (23%) – you're in luck, with the choice of, er... one!

And large SUV – also one, but not one you can take off the road.

It's probably not good business to promote your opposition, but Drive.com.au's editor Toby Hagon hit the nail on the head when last week he ran a story calculating that the government's pronouncement would add circa 150 sales per annum. In a new car market of over one million vehicles...

In total Australian built cars number seven: one small car, one medium car (Aurion is a V6 Camry-- period), two large cars, two utes and a large softroader.

The solution to Australia's car manufacturing woes is not forcing people to buy cars they can't use. The solution, at the risk of being simplistic, is to build cars they can...

This writer is on Twitter @petrolhedonist

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