Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday firmly rejected a push by the union movement for a ''buy Australian'' campaign, saying that such protectionist policies only intensified the Great Depression of the 1930s.
''We need to avoid any form of protectionist measure, which invites retaliatory protectionist measures from economies around the world, and that's what would happen,'' Mr Rudd said yesterday.
''The mistake of the Great Depression in the early 1930s was this: economies believed that the way to get themselves through was to shut their economies down and close their borders to imports from abroad.''
''What happens? The entire global economy shrinks. What happened in the '30s? That depression resulted in negligible economic growth throughout the 1930s, we're not about to repeat those mistakes here.''
Manufacturing unions have been pressing for this week's ALP national conference to adopt a policy similar to the NSW Labor government's policy to give local firms a 20 per cent price advantage when tendering for government projects. The Australian Workers' Union yesterday released a poll of 1044 respondents showing that 85per cent of people were in favour of the Federal Government buying Australian-made goods, even if it cost more.
AWU national secretary Paul Howes said the poll showed, ''Australian taxpayers believe and expect that when the government uses taxpayers' money, that should be used to keep Australians in work.''
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Dave Oliver said Australia had lost 76,000 jobs from the manufacturing sector in the last 12 months.
''As the polling has shown today, the Government has a responsibility to provide policy to assist those industries to maintain employment,'' he said.
''The simplest thing they can do to date is in particular regard to the spend on the infrastructure projects ... is about maximising local content to get the best bang for the buck.''
However Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner also categorically rejected the idea, saying that the ''Buy Australia'' approach would be counterproductive.
''Price discrimination against imports would threaten our international trade obligations, it would cost the government more,'' he said yesterday.
There was much the Government could do to help Australian companies compete in global markets, ''but if we actually tilt the playing field artificially in their favour, that does them no benefit in the longer term and a return to protectionism would be a disaster for the Australian economy in the wider sense.''
Despite the brush off from Federal Labor leadership, ACTU chief Jeff Lawrence said the union movement would press its case at the Labor national conference.
''The union movement will never go quiet,'' Mr Lawrence said.
''We will be talking about all of the issues and we will be seeking to influence Labor policy to the greatest extent we can.''
''The priority has to be the protection of jobs and we want to make sure our effort is going into persuading the government or seeking to persuade the government that jobs need to be protected, workers' entitlements need to be protected, and that job security needs to be protected.'' With AAP
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