How One Government Plan Destroyed Australia’s Car Industry (carsales)

On October 20, 2017, the last red Holden VF Commodore rolled off the line in Elizabeth, South Australia. It marked the end of nearly a century of Australian automotive manufacturing. But how did a country that once built millions of its own vehicles end up manufacturing none?

In this episode of Fuel for Thought, we break down the history, flawed logic, and fatal miscalculations of The Button Plan – the 1984 government restructuring intended to save Australia's car industry that ultimately sealed its fate.

From high-tariff protectionism to awkward badge-engineering experiments like the Toyota Lexcen, and foreign boardrooms in Detroit and Tokyo blocking Australian exports, discover the full structural story behind why Australia stopped making cars.



The car industry was protected by tariffs from a tsunami of overseas imports and finally killed off by the global corporations when they moved production offshore so they could make larger profits in other jurisdictions.

They key thing to understand is that consumers could still afford to buy cars when manufacturing was based in Australia. All that happened was the loss of industry, jobs and self sufficiency.

This video frames this situation as an organic process where the Government tried to make Australian vehicles more competitive with overseas production, while the real issue was simply letting a small country fall victim to corporate profiteering via political incompetence. 

The knock on impacts have been an overall winding back of industrial activity, with fewer and fewer import controls, turning Australia into a near banana republic. Industrial production has further declined helped by high energy costs caused by NET ZERO polices. All of this is a result of incompetent globalist aligned neo-liberal politicians. 

Tariffs should slowly be raised on imported products and laws changed to raise taxes on offshored production and financing. Nationalist leaning political parties are needed to address this mess.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, September 4, 2026.]