By Charlene Macaulay
Workers in the western suburbs will be among the biggest casualties when Toyota’s Altona plant ceases production at the end of 2017.
Advocacy group LeadWest predicts the loss of 2500 jobs from the Altona manufacturing plant will cut the employment profile of Melbourne’s west – including all direct, industrial and consumption effects – by as many as 5191 jobs.
LeadWest chief executive Craig Rowley estimates Wyndham residents will comprise 25 per cent of job losses, ahead of Hobsons Bay (14 per cent) and Maribyrnong (8.5 per cent) residents. The group will present its findings to the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into the future of Australia’s automotive industry later this month.
LeadWest’s estimate of job losses follows an Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre report last year, which concluded the end of automotive manufacturing by Ford, Holden, Toyota and suppliers could result in 17,441 jobs losses across the west by 2017.
Mr Rowley said the closure of the Toyota plant would create a new set of challenges for the west.
“There’s no doubt that the loss of those jobs has a flow-on effect that takes other jobs out of the region’s economy,” he said. “We already have the challenge of needing to rebalance the region’s economy so it’s not so overly dependent on manufacturing and has more professional services.
“This just makes that challenge all the more harder,” he said. “We really need to pick up the pace on job creation.”
Wyndham councillor and economic development portfolio holder Intaj Khan agreed.
“There’s a lot more work that needs to be done to get good employers – maybe a government agency like Centrelink, or the Australian Tax Office – to support Wyndham’s growth,” he said.
“Closing Toyota will impact a lot of workers. I know we’re trying to promote the idea of living locally and working locally but we also need to create jobs locally.
“At the moment, we’re lacking the big corporations and this is what we really need,”
Cr Khan said.
