By CASEY NEILL
AT LEAST six companies and 300 jobs in Melbourne’s south-east are on the line, following Toyota’s decision to leave Australia.
South East Melbourne Manufacturers Alliance (SEMMA) executive officer Adrian Boden said Toyota was the biggest nail in the automotive manufacturing industry’s coffin.
He said Toyota produced about 140,000 cars in Australia and purchased about 70 per cent of the components here, compared to about 50 per cent at Holden and Ford.
“In December we had a number of companies who told us the Holden decision was going to make their life difficult but they could survive, but if Toyota left it would be a different question,” he said.
He said preliminary investigations following last week’s announcement indicated about six companies in the south-east might go under, affecting up to 300 people.
“There will be a number of others,” he said.
Mr Boden said SEMMA representatives would visit companies in danger and look for opportunities for them to work with other SEMMA members to save jobs.
“You have to have growth to absorb them,” he said.
“We don’t have that growth at the moment.”
He said pumping money into innovation wasn’t the answer.
“Manufacturing’s been innovating for 200 years. It happens all the time,” he said.
“It’s how do we take to market those innovations? We need to market them overseas.”
Mr Boden said a government ‘buy Australian’ policy would help.
“Don’t just buy on lowest price,” he said.
Lyndhurst MP Martin Pakula met with Mr Boden last Friday.
“We discussed the potential impact of the auto industry withdrawal on business owners, workers and their families, as well as the flow-on effects for other small businesses that rely on trade in industrial zones in the south-east,” he said.
“In the coming weeks, I will visit auto component manufacturers in Dandenong South to discuss the impact of these cuts and what assistance they might need.”
Mr Pakula said the State Government needed to support businesses to adapt, to export and to diversify.
