Australians prepared to see Toyota leave

It seems like the protection versus free trade argument may have been won by the free traders in Australia.

This could be a first for anywhere in the world, and is an argument that we have been having with ourselves since before Federation, with the protection side winning the initial post-Federation argument resulting in what Paul Kelly calls the "Deakinite Settlement", of high tariffs, minimum wages, White Australia and universal social security.

The free trade argument runs counter to reflexive commonsense, so it says a lot about how the modern Australian economy runs that it now appears to be in the ascendant.

In December we asked our respondents whether Tony Abbott was right to rule out giving more money to Toyota to stay in Australia. 52% agreed that he was right while only 28% agreed that he was wrong, giving a net support of 24%.

Support was strongest amongst Liberals, where protectionism seems to have almost completely vanished, and weakest amongst Labour voters, where 51% favoured providing funds. While only small numbers of Greens agreed with the government position, the highest proportion of Greens voters were neutral on the issue.

Importantly for the government, minor party voters supported their position, with only 30% disagreeing.

The position of ALP supporters is interesting because through history since 1972, it has been Labor that has done more to dismantley tariffs in general, and specifically on the motor vehicle industry, than Liberal.

This has probably been against the natural bent of their constituency, and in large part owes much to the superb salesmanship of Paul Keating whose disdain for "spivs" asking for more government money was visceral.

The Leximancer map shows pretty clearly how the arguments run (click on the image for a larger version).

For Labor voters it is most strongly about the economy, the future and jobs. For Liberals it is about taking a stand against propping-up businesses as well as a stand against the unions.

In the middle the minor party voters are worried about jobs and people and are most closely associated with the proposition that the car industry needs support everywhere in the world.

The anti-union line is pretty clear in the government's narrative, as is the concern about jobs and the future of industry in the opposition's, but there are some other themes that come out in analysis of the qualitative polling that are interesting.

One is the perception that all of the motor car companies are actually foreign-owned and don't deserve our support, and that in fact overseas ownership could be an impediment to our competing internationally.

As much as you can sum up a large dataset like this, the onbalance quote from this participant probably comes the closest:

As much as I think we do need our own manufacturing base and it is an embarrassment that our sector is declining to one of the lowest in the OECD, these companies are not making decisions on nationalistic sentiments but purely profit-driven motives for the owners and do not deserve to be given perpetual handouts. It would be cheaper for the government and better for nearly everyone long term for any government money to be one-off assistance to remove workers from that industry and retrain for productive and skilled work in another area.

Some other comments which summed up the mood:

Why should the Australian taxpayer support a foreign owned company. The unions have destroyed this industry and now the companies, Ford, Holden, and possibly Toyota wll consolidate their businesses, and move to countries where they are not held to ranson by the militant unions.

I vote Labor most of the time, but, I'm an economic rationalist, Paul Keating is my hero, there is no point propping up industries to buy a few jobs, the country is in good shape, yet only 8% are employed in industry, there are plenty of robust economies around the world without a car industry

Subsidies never work in the long term, if they did, Mitsubishi, Ford, Holden would still be here making vehicles the consumer's demand. 

From my experience in the car industry, most of the subsidy money flows back to head office and local workers strike very sweet deals with local management to keep the gravy train going as long as possible.

We need a car industry They stuffed up with Holden & Australia will pay the cost (Also the poors Holden workers & associated industries) They cannot afford politically to stuff up again

Abbott has to stop behaving like a student politician and think about the good of the country. Many more jobs will disappear with the destruction of the car manufacturing industry - not just workers of Holden and Toyota

Virtually every industry in Australia is subsidised directly or indirectly by government handouts. The destruction of tens of thousands of jobs both directly and indirectly will cost the government much more than the subsidies Holden (and Toyota) were seeking.

The Deakinite Settlement was ground-breaking in its time, and many countries looked at Australia and copied pieces of it.

It seems like we are leading the world - but this time in the opposite direction. Whether you agree with it or not, it appears that most Australians accept the logic of it.