Perfidious Nouvelle-Galles du Sud
Why, you might ask, had the Automotive industry largely quit NSW almost a decade before the end of the last century? Why did it make a strategic withdrawal south, falling back like a defeated prince, to its last strongholds in Victoria and South Australia? Well, that’s where they had previously expanded from. And that goes back to Federation, to political support, and to free trade NSW, verses protectionist Victoria and South Australia. This is a debate that has continued, as an undercurrent to Australian political debate, ever since.
It was revived this week, during the present hand wringing, by someone from the affected States saying that the Holden closure decision was the outcome of a plot by economic rationalists who are, apparently, universally resident on Sydney’s North Shore. In short, it's the nefarious plotting of perfidious Nouvelle-Galles du Sud (New South Wales).
So, given our extensive past experience of automotive closures in Nouvelle-Galles du Sud, what is likely to be the outcome of these closures?
When Holden announced the closure of its huge Pagewood plant in Sydney in the late 70's it was decided that the Unions would track the thousands of soon to be unemployed workers to see how long they would be unemployed. After a month or two there was hardly anyone from the plant, except those who no longer wanted to continue working, who was still unemployed. Critics of this less than disastrous conclusion, including colleagues of mine, argued that highly skilled Holden workers had displaced less skilled workers elsewhere so that the unemployment caused was hidden in an indirect 'domino effect' that spread out across the State, well beyond Pagewood.
For example, a mechanic or body worker at Holden is likely to be more experienced, skilled and better trained than the many, more numerous mechanics and body builders, holding down jobs in automotive repair shops. They are likely to be hired perhaps in Western Sydney, to replace others less skilled who will be ‘let go’. So that although the Holden workers are no longer unemployed someone else has lost their job. And that person may in turn may replace another, even less skilled in a country town, and so on, so that eventually some poor soul drops out, onto the dole queue in Ettamogah.
It was like the observation in the TV show The Games that removing the front row of seats, in the Sydney Olympic Stadium, was not to lose the premium row. The seat numbering would simply start at the new front row. Those lost would be from amongst the cheapest seats at the back.