The article ignores some pertinent facts.

If the car manufacturing business ceases what will happen to steel flat products? What will Australia be capable of producing if Bluescope ceases production.

Chifley promoted the introduction of the automotive, white goods, trucks and buses, and rolling stock industries and, as a consequence, BHP built a steel plate and strip mill at Port Kembla.

If coal and iron ore prices drop, or eventually the raw materials are exhausted, Australia will have no industrial production capacity and probably no construction steel and we won't be able to afford to import our needs.

We need clear industrial production aims.

No is the short answer to a long article on whether Australia's car industry can be viable. Thousand of words, and more words, will not make it so.

The technocrat elite, who advise politicians too dumb to make decisions that are not in the best interests of Australian tax payers, keep on making he same mistakes. Putting more money into industry that pay their workers too much every time they ask for it - just to produce cars nobody wants - is too stupid for words, especially when it has not worked in the past.

The sooner Holden and Toyota leave Australia the better.No more need to protect cars nobody wants with tariffs and taxpayer funds, the cheaper cars will be.

A simple alternative to outright tariffs would be to set the highest standards in the world, offer subsidies to Aussie manufacturers to meet those standards, and tax any co. which doesn't.
A “5 star” rating system could reward models with lower rego and insurance fees, which:
1 don't use fossil fuels -or at least use natural gas, at a lower rating
2 have the highest crash survival rating
3 best braking systems
4 cannot exceed the maximum speed limit.
Drivers under the age of 25 could be restricted to owning 5 star cars.
OTOH, what's really so wrong with tariffs? To suggest that Australians should not have to work for less than the minimum wage, but it's OK to buy products from countries which don't have minimum wage standards is hypocritical and discriminatory (probably not relevant to the whole car industry...)
Also a pollution / transport tax should not be unreasonable in this day and age, when the 16 largest cargo ships in the world produce more pollution than all the cars in the world.

The answer is not money, it is providing cars that people want. The technology used by Holden (General Motors USA) is outdated. It is nice to have car that parks itself and has TV cameras on the back but what about an environmentally savvy car? Oil is running out and as it does, it gets more expensive. What is needed is a lighter car that consumes less fuel. A car designed to run on biofuels, solar or hydrogen or combinations of same. Hemp fibre (that product governments think will cause the end of the world as we know it) as a composite, is stronger than steel and a fraction of the weight. Cars will actually run on hemp seed oil, thus removing the need to drill for oil. There will be objectors saying it is not economically viable but they have to say that because they are paid to. We have more than enough land in our red centre to grow billions of tons of the stuff and give work in regional areas to thousands. We have more sunshine than almost any other country on Earth and yet our solar industry is way behind the rest of the world. Why? Because we have weak-minded governments who don't want to change the status quo! The newly-elected Abbott Government is trying to remove the carbon tax, which funds initiatives that are creating sustainable new jobs. This is the very infrastructure needed to boost a new, sustainable car industry. Let Holden go home to the US and fund an Australian, green car industry and get a lead on the rest of the world.

No! Not in its current form. We need to make something the rest of the world will want to buy!
Namely, NG powered electric vehicles!
We could adapt Aussie innovation, and replace banks of very expensive lithium batteries, with much lighter ceramic fuel cells and a few capacitators.

Making range of the electric vehicle comparative with that of LPG variants. And able to be refueled just as quickly!
All that would be required would be NG refilling stations. And where a NG pipeline is currently not viable, rail and road tankers, could transport CNG!
A cubic metre of non compressed gas, has a calorific energy value, equal to a litre of standard grade petrol! And various gas suppliers, are on the public record saying the could supply Automotive gas for just 40 cents a litre!. Further, given energy coefficients as high as 85%, this combination would not only be clean and green, but the most economical on the planet!

Moreover, given the conversion from gas to electricity inside an ceramic fuel cell, is a chemical reaction rather than combustion, the exhaust product of these vehicles, would be mostly water vapor.
After that, and if the current car manufacturers, won't come to the party?
We should wave them all goodbye, and plow our car manufacturing subsidy money into an employee co-op that will!
And we need to get something back for the money already plowed in; namely, the robotics!

In a trade deal with china, we could make the chassis, with all the mechanical components on it, and allow the Chinese to bolt on their bodies, seats etc. It'd be a massive market, and around 40-50% of that market, would be a whole lot better than the 100% of nothing, one way vehicle trade that exists currently!

Given China's smog problems, we couldn't build these vehicles fast enough!
And as we up production capacities, there remains huge Indian, American And European markets!?

With those economies of scale inherent in a revamped industry, large parts of the allied car parts industries, would not just survive, but massively prosper!
Rhrosty.

Correction, and apologies. 40 cents a litre, should read 40 cents a cubic metre.
Rhrosty.