Holden sticks to wait-and-see plans
Car maker Holden is sticking firmly to its plan to wait until after the federal election to decide its future, despite a visit from South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill.
Weatherill went to Holden’s Melbourne head office on Wednesday for more talks with chairman and managing director Mike Devereux.
The Premier doesn’t expect to get a commitment from Holden at the meeting, but hopes to progress an agreement for SA to provide $50 million to help the company build two new cars in Adelaide from 2016.
A key point will be a guarantee from Holden on minimum job numbers at its Adelaide assembly operations.
The funding was part of a $275 million package negotiated between Holden, the SA and Victorian governments and the commonwealth last year, but never officially signed.
The company is now thought to be wanting more assistance and says any final agreement with the SA government will need to wait until after discussions with the incoming federal government.
“Our position remains that we are not making any decision on forward investments or our next generation manufacturing program until after the federal election and after we have held detailed discussions with the new federal government,” a spokesman said.
“Any agreements with state governments will be finalised following that.”
South Australian Opposition Leader Steven Marshall criticised Weatherill’s trip to Melbourne as an example of the Premier jumping on planes and calling press conferences just to demonstrate he was doing something.
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Marshall said the state Opposition remained fully committed to Holden, but needed to ensure any agreement flowed from a proper cost-benefit analysis and offered support for the entire auto supply chain.
“We need to sit down and do a deal which is good for Holden, good for the workers but also good for South Australia,” he said.
“We can’t have a situation where we just write out a blank cheque to a foreign company with no safeguards for the investment that we’ll be making.”
