There’s a potentially significant upside to Toyota’s decision to walk away from Australian manufacturing. With the last of the local automotive manufacturers announcing its departure, there is now no longer any justification for retaining the last vestiges of protectionism in the automotive industry. In the May budget, Treasurer Joe Hockey should announce that the remaining 5% tariff on passenger vehicles (except for vehicles made in Thailand, the United States, Malaysia and, in the future, South Korea) will be scrapped, giving buyers of imported vehicles an immediate, if not huge, cut in car prices.
Better yet, there’s no longer any need to preserve the punitive tariff on imported second-hand cars, which is currently $12,000 regardless of the value of the cars. This will give Australian consumers access to an entirely new market of vehicles — provided importers can demonstrate they are safe for Australian conditions. Consumers in New Zealand — a country without the macho obsession with maintaining a car building industry at any cost — have for decades been able to buy cheap second-hand imports from markets like Japan.
If the government fails to immediately move to end these tariffs, it can only be because it has decided to retain them as revenue-raising measures at the expense of Australian consumers; there will no longer be any policy rationale for them. There’s no point in protectionism when there’s no longer an industry to protect.
This will be a big win for the automotive retail sector. The sector’s industry body claims there are 100,000 motor retailers in Australia employing over 300,000 people — but take that with a liberal dose of salt, given the Productivity Commission says only about 230,000 people are employed in the entire automotive repair, maintenance and retail sector. But even at only, say, 100,000, the automotive retail sector is a more significant employer than the automotive manufacturing sector.
Then there’s the luxury vehicle tax, levied on vehicles over around $57,000, which currently stands at 33%, the level to which the Rudd government lifted it from 25%. This is a simple soak-the-rich revenue-raising measure, and probably unlikely to be dropped in a tough fiscal environment.
Immediately dumping the tariffs would be smart politics for a government that, henceforth, will have to wear the tag of the government that closed the car industry. It would demonstrate to Australians that protectionism comes with a cost, not just in terms of taxpayer dollars but every time they buy a car, and that there are benefits from removing these industry support mechanisms.
The response from unions, Labor and those who believe in a local car industry is always that other governments around the world subsidise their car manufacturing industries, and that Australia has, by international standards, cheap car industry support mechanisms. Indeed we do. But another way of looking at that is that every time you buy an or an American vehicle, or a German vehicle, or a Korean vehicle or (until recently) a Japanese vehicle, the governments of those countries are subsidising your purchase. If foreign taxpayers are happy to subsidise us, often to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars per vehicle, we should enjoy their largesse. It’s certainly no reason why our government should join in the subsidy game.
“If the government fails to immediately move to end these tariffs, it can only be because it has decided to retain them as revenue-raising measures at the expense of Australian consumers;”
Which is exactly what will happen. Can anybody honestly see an Australian government, Coalition or otherwise, voluntarily removing a major source of revenue? We’re constantly being screwed over in this way. Just because we will no longer have a car industry to protect won’t change anything.
Hmmm the cynic in me is torn between yours and Tristan’s opinion.Tho I’m leaning toward Tristan’s take being the more likely. However should it come to pass and Australia is swamped with cheap imports beware the Japanese second hand cars – if the NZ experience is anything to go by. Lots and lots of flash looking cars stored on waterfronts and shipped en masse – the result a couple of years of good driving then a rust bucket with very expensive electrical problems. Caveat Emptor and all that.
As the PM said, some jobs will go and others will open up. Continuing the tariffs will do nothing to prevent jobs going but may prevent other jobs (such as refitting imported second hand cars up to safety standards) from opening up.
Bernard – Wrong, wrong, wrong!
You sound like the extreme right-wing journalists who agreed with, no pushed, the views of Margaret Thatcher, back in the last century. You know, that comment she made about there being no such thing as a society, only an economy (or something similar).
The rAbbott and his motley crew of a government remind me of what Thatcher did to Britain. That took a generation to fix, after she laid waste to the country. I fear we are in for something similar here. Hopefully, Labor will be returned to government in 2016, before the damage is complete.
And BTW, who is going to buy ANY of these imported cars at any price, new or used, when there is going to be a huge number of people out of work? Alright for you, and the commentators above, who obviously have good jobs or are wealthy.
Such selfish attitudes just proves that none of you care about ‘society’. Only the economy is worth talking about.
Paddy Manning has got it right – economic vandals, the lot of them!
CML, how will retaining tariffs assist employees affected by the cessation of assembly in Australia ?