End of the Road?

by Gideon Haigh

Australia is one of just thirteen countries in the world equipped to take a car from design concept all the way to a showroom – a remarkable achievement in a market so small. Yet the industry has few friends, and many vociferous critics who argue that the country should not make cars at all. In this engaging and insightful analysis for the lay reader, Gideon Haigh explains why the industry has become an ideological battleground, and reveals the more complex and surprising truth behind the partisan rhetoric.

Genres: Economics, Business, Australia

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 21, 2013

About the author

Gideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh (born 29 December 1965) is an English-born Australian journalist, who writes about sport (especially cricket) and business. He was born in London, raised in Geelong, and now lives in Melbourne.

Haigh began his career as a journalist, writing on business for The Age newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over 70 newspapers and magazines,[2] both on business topics as well as on sport, mostly cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian during the 2006-07 Ashes series and has featured also in The Times and the Financial Times.

Haigh has authored 19 books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical works includes The Cricket War and Summer Game, his biographies The Big Ship (of Warwick Armstrong) and Mystery Spinner (of Jack Iverson), the latter pronounced The Cricket Society's "Book of the Year", short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times;[3] anthologies of his writings Ashes 2005 and Game for Anything, as well as Many a Slip, the humorous diary of a club cricket season, and The Vincibles, his story of the South Yarra Cricket Club, of which he is life member and perennate vice-president and for whose newsletter he has written about cricket the longest. He has also published several books on business-related topics, such as The Battle for BHP, Asbestos House (which dilates the James Hardie asbestos controversy) and Bad Company, an examination of the CEO phenomenon. He mostly publishes with Aurum Press.

Haigh was appointed editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia for 1999–2000 and 2000–01. Since March 2006, he has been a regular panellist on the ABC television sports panel show Offsiders. He was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne until near the end of 2006.

Haigh has been known to be critical of what he regards as the deification of Sir Donald Bradman and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy".[4] He did so in a September 1998 article in Wisden Cricket Monthly, entitled "Sir Donald Brandname". Haigh has been critical of Bradman's biographer Roland Perry, writing in The Australian that Perry's biography was guilty of "glossing over or ignoring anything to Bradman's discredit".[4]

Haigh won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2006[5] for his essay "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid",[6] which was published in The Monthly magazine. He asserted that the quality of discourse could suffer as a source of information's worth is judged by Google according to its previous degree of exposure to the status quo. He believes the pool of information available to those using Google as their sole avenue of inquiry is inevitably limited and possibly compromised due to covert commercial influences.

He blogged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer.[7]

On 24 October 2012 he addressed the tenth Bradman Oration in Melbourne.

Reviews

[Venky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gideon Haigh is universally acclaimed as the greatest living cricket author. However it is not cricket that attracts his thoughts in this small book. Haigh passionately dwells into the woes plaguing the automobile industry in Australia and succinctly traces the imperiled path to doom traversed by this once booming industry.

Government subsidies, import tariffs, ever changing consumer preferences all contrive together to coalesce into a picture that is tragic, a future that is for all practical purposes immensely bleak. Haigh's clarion call for the preservation of the automobile manufacturer's future is poignantly captured in his evocative chapter dealing with Holden's car manufacturing plant.

A work to showcase the myriad versatility of one of the most formidable journalists of our generation.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who’d have thought that a book on the car industry could be entertaining as well as educating. Sad that it came too late to illuminate the political class, of both persuasions. Most damage was probably done by the free market/non-interventionist ideologues, but the Gillard government’s abandonment of the Green Car manufacturing initiative was the final nail in the coffin for the core manufacturers and their network of subsidiary suppliers. That action expedited the irrevocable demise of our manufacturing base. Rather than attempting to paraphrase this meticulously researched work, it is better to illustrate by picking out a few observational pearls.”In disparaging the industry, critics, most of whom seldom do other with their hands than scuffle keyboards so as to shed pseudo-light on non-problems, also reveal something of their metropolitan alienation from the idea of work with a material end that uplifts its maker.” “It is surely a badge of distinction to be despised by the two most censorious factions in the world of opinion, the cycling sandalistas of the left and the dessicated calculating machines of the right.” “That’s work in one post-automotive landscape. Wages globally competitive. Awards flexible. Employees multiskilled. and completely screwed.”

[Tim Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very surprised by how much I learned in this book. I thought I knew quite a bit about the automotive industry but it turns out that I knew very little about the Australian history.

It is sad reading this though, there are quite a few tips about how we can save the industry which we now know is dead. This was only written last year and it is already very dated.

Also, the book is certainly not unbiased in its approach. Since I happen to agree with it's bias, this didn't exactly bother me.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent history of car manufacturing in Australia. Written before all the car factories finally closed down but still relevant.