Today I rise to talk about the most recent spate of job losses in my electorate of Calwell. On 11 January this year Kraft Foods Australia announced that as of 31 March this year its biscuit-making factory in Broadmeadows would close permanently, resulting in the loss of 151 jobs.
This is just another blow to the working men and women of my electorate who rely on the manufacturing sector for their livelihoods and for those of their families.
I am particularly disappointed with Kraft Foods Australia because when I first became the member for Calwell—an event that coincided with the purchase of Lanes Biscuits by Kraft—I met with the CEO and other management officials seeking reassurances that the biscuit facility would remain in our community. Management assured me at the time that this would be the case. Kraft has now shunned its promise and closed the factory, leaving the 151 employees, many of whom have given over a decade’s loyal service, in the cold without a steady income and with limited job prospects. The reasons given by Kraft have an all too familiar and bitter ring to them. The company’s corporate and government affairs manager, Andrew Kilsby, stated in a letter:
... an on-going business review has deemed the closure of the Broadmeadows facility as necessary to the company’s overall business prospects as the Broadmeadows facility lacks scale and the manufacturing costs remain too high for the facility to remain sustainable within the highly competitive biscuit category.
Kraft’s response is therefore to move the manufacturing of some of its biscuit brands to a regional facility in China where no doubt it believes it could have better prospects of greater profits. Although Kraft is mindful, it states, of the impact this will have on its local workforce, I want to emphasise that the news, delivered with little notice, constitutes nothing smaller than a catastrophe for local families, many of whom will struggle to find another job in industry when companies are literally fleeing overseas chasing profits. These job losses however are only a drop in the ocean compared to the whopping 60,700 jobs that have been lost from Australian manufacturing in the last year.
It is clear that our manufacturing base is haemorrhaging. In the last year in my electorate alone we have seen Autoliv Australia shed 500 jobs and Kozmo industries shed 40 jobs. We have seen Ford Australia announce progressive cutbacks to all its plants including the Broadmeadows plant and Kraft again cut back in 2006 after an initial job loss of 2,400 jobs in Victoria in 2004. Australian manufacturing has a proud tradition. We need to sustain our productivity and international competitiveness. This cannot be achieved by lowering wages and conditions, actions that will only further weaken industry, making Australian workers even more vulnerable. We cannot compete with China and India on wages but we can compete by investing in skills and in training. It is imperative that the government recognises this in response to the crisis facing our manufacturing industry.
