AS the manufacturing future of Holden and Toyota remain uncertain, the car industry has published a new report which claims the Australian economy would be $21.5 billion smaller if the automotive manufacturing industry died in 2018…
However in a major embarrassment likely to undermine the findings, one of the firms involved in the latest study did a report earlier this year for another client that recommended taxpayer funding to industries should be cut.
The new report prepared by the Allen Consulting Group, using economic analysis from Monash University, found that the $500 million the car industry received each year generated a claimed $21.5 billion in economic activity.
This contradicts a report in April this year prepared by ACIL Allen - the company formed when ACIL Tasman merged with the Allen Consulting Group - which recommended taxpayer support be cut from struggling industries.
“Subsidies to particular industries are a tax on the remainder of the economy,” said the ACIL Allen report prepared for the Property Council Of Australia. “They have become more significant in the last decade, totally nearly $9 billion annually. The more successful industries, those that do not need subsidies, prop up the less successful ones.”
