Australia's carmakers are being encouraged to take the next step into motorng globalisation by creating a significant, high-tech and well- funded point of difference for the cars which are created and built here.
Hybrid future cars are now a foregone conclusion in Australia. And electric cars must follow.
We already have the imported Honda Civic and Toyota Prius, with a petrol-electric Camry on the local drawing boards for 2010, but any carmaker which is serious about a long-term future in Australian manufacturing must turn green.
Holden has a plan for an alternate-energy Commodore, and has already begun the 'hybridisation' of Australia's favourite family car with moves to green its V6 and V8 engines - with much more to come for efficient petrol power.
But the Federal Government's new strategy - and funding - probably puts the final nail in the coffin of a locally-developed Ford Falcon.
The cost and complication will be too great for a car which is already in decline and only sells at home in Australia.
And that is really the key to the announcement yesterday of the big- bucks 'New Car Plan for a Greener Future'.
Australia's carmakers are being encouraged to take the next step into motorng globalisation by creating a significant, high-tech and well- funded point of difference for the cars which are created and built here.
It is also a way of sucking investment into Australia from the global headquarters of the three remaining local makers - Ford, GM Holden and Toyota.
Holden and Toyota are already well integrated into the worldwide plans of their parents and even Ford, which looks a little isolated, is doing a lot of development work for overseas products and moving rapidly towards a manufacturing future with the compact Focus which will become its Asian export spearhead.
So there will be challenges - but nothing which cannot be overcome.
There was all sorts of doom-and-gloom talk the last time the motor industry faced a change as fundamental as the one announced yesterday, with the Post-1984 Motor Industry Plan.
The so-called 'Button Plan' - named after its architect, the late Senator John Button - re-wrote the rules for Australian carmaking. It reduced complication and duplication, provided incentives for exports and ripped down a wall of protection.
Before 1984 the motor industry was insular and inefficient, over- subsidised and over-protected, but it changed and adapted. There were casualties, with Nissan dropping out of local manufacturing in 1986 and Mitsubishi following this year, but the general result has been positive.
The history lesson is important because the new deal is the same again, with a leaner-and-greener twist which starts with increased subsidies for LPG cars - good news for Falcon and Commodore buyers - and takes the industry deeply into the sort of technology which will be needed in a world after oil.
There is no single silver bullet for the future car, but the Federal Government has shown it wants Australia to be at the sharp edge as the global motor industry advances into the 21st century.
There will be some pain and plenty of restructuring for Australian companies, but the $6.2 billion in funding from the government will ease everything from short-term dislocation to the long-term research- and-development programs needed to turn local green cars from a political dream into a showroom reality.
