AMWU blasts Abbott - manufacturing

I had the terrible misfortune a couple of times of seeing that crazy Abbott add on the telly, crapping on about his so called plans for the future. As it's only a 30 second clip I've not had the time to find the remote and get his lunacy off the screen. In it he mentions "strengthening our manufacturing industry" or the like. I burst out laughing! Try telling that to the car industry (or what's left of it) where Abbott is going to rip out the half billion $ gov assistance to it.

Their manufacturing policy (if you could call it that) PDF can be found here. Although it's 19 pages long, it's basically an ideological document saying that they don't believe in gov assistance to industries that are in trouble. That may or may not work in massive great big countries like the US (um, it didn't did it) but with Australia and a population of only 23 million, you simply can't have a car industry without gov support. According to Abbott, you can.

Well obviously my union, the AMWU, vehemently disagrees. In their latest newsletter they rip Abbotts manufacturing policy to bits. I'd certainly trust the union at the coal face rather than some ideological buffoon in Canberra, to know what's good for them.

“Was that it? There has to be more to it,” said Mr Bastian after viewing the 20-minute press call at Volvo in Brisbane.

“They’ve had six years to develop detailed policy and the best they can do is stand there and recite a series of motherhood statements.

“There’s a million manufacturing jobs riding on this, workers need to know what Mr Abbott will do to encourage exports and innovation beyond slashing industry programs and outsourcing his industry portfolios to the Productivity Commission.”

Mr Bastian said it was gobsmacking that Mr Abbott appeared oblivious to the Labor Government’s $1 billion innovation and manufacturing jobs strategy when asked about its future.

The would-be PM mistook the question as a query on car policy, before Ms Mirabella interrupted him to confirm the 10 innovation hubs and Australian participation rules of the Jobs Plan would all be scrapped.

The cuts she didn’t talk about include $1.5 billion from Enterprise Connect, Venture Australia, Australian Innovation Partnerships and the clean technology programs.

“Mr Abbott wants to sail through on sound bites, but he couldn’t govern that way,” Mr Bastian said.

The Coalition event came hours after it was revealed the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries had estimated the Abbott policy of cutting $500 million from car industry co-investment to 2015 would cost 90,000 jobs nationally, sucking $23 billion of investment out of the economy.

The AMWU fears the toll could be eventually closer to 200,000 jobs. more

Personally I've pretty well resigned myself to Abbott winning this thing now. Labor has been too far behind for too long. soon we shall have something akin to Yosemite Sam leading us.