Welcome to the Button plan, the Hawke Government plan to REDUCE the number of local manufacturers. They got rid of Nissan.

Obviously the commentators on this article seem to forget that Ford closed up shop during the Rudd/Gillard years and Holden and Toyota all decided to quite during that same government, only announcing it a few weeks into the Abbott govt term. Mitsubishi closed up because the SA Labor government refused to support them.

So in short, the decisions that drove car manufacturing out of the country all took place under Labor governments and were in large measure the result of union demands on salaries and conditions and the choice by government not to busy locally built cars.

Now we wait for JS to say that none of this is true, DNA to blame Howard, Fraser and Menzies for it and Monk to say that the government could start its own car company for $50M.

So predictable...