Canberra 17 July 2013. Yesterday’s decision by Kevin Rudd to scrap the existing FBT arrangements for salary-sacrificed and employer-provided cars represents yet more Labor deceit and is another $1.8 billion slap in the face for Australia’s car industry.


It also again highlights the obvious reality that Labor’s words about its approach to car industry funding should never be believed.


The snap move (again made without so much as a phone call to the industry itself) adds to an atrocious history of sudden U-turns on car industry policy by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments, which already includes broken promises of $1.4 billion.


In adding to the introduction of hundreds of millions of dollars of new costs under the carbon tax and an earlier $954 million cut in 2011 to FBT arrangements for Australian motorists, yesterday’s decision by Mr Rudd also now means that the total of new taxes Labor has already slugged on the industry has now billowed to more than $3 billion.


From a party that always likes to hoodwink Australians into believing it is the car industry’s best friend, it is another extraordinary double-cross.  As the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries has pointed out, it is likely to have “dire consequences for Australia’s vehicle industry” and could potentially crush the sales of cars in Australia by up to one-third.


Labor always talks up its plans for the car industry, and yet it never delivers.  In addition to its multi-billion dollar broken promises, tax slugs and a proliferation of new forms of red tape, it has already presided over the loss of 80,000 jobs linked to the industry, and stunning declines in vehicle production, exports and turnover.


By contrast, the Coalition will always be focused on continuing our outstanding record when we were last in government in presiding over substantial rises in all of those indicators.


Unlike Labor, we also remain committed to our ongoing and consistent approach of talking honestly, regularly and directly with the industry and providing it with certainty about our intentions.