www.ntnews.com.au Thursday, December 12, 2013. NT NEWS. 3 PUB: NT NE- WS- DA TE: 12-D GE: 3 C LO- R: C M Y K COOLER TORCH NOW SOLD @ WISDOM/FOX ALE HOUSE ntnews.com.au l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l NEWS Holden on no longer By JOSHUA DOWLING Classic Holden Car Club of the NT’s Mal Janes — with his 1971 HQ Statesman — says he is is sad to see Holden end its Aussie operations Picture: ELISE DERWIN Sales crash forces hand HOLDEN’S shutdown means the once mighty Aussie com- pany will become a shell of its former self and import most of its cars from the neighbouring Asian coun- tries that have forced it to shut its factories. The iconic car maker yes- terday triggered a storm of outrage after announcing it would no longer manufac- ture cars here from 2017, cut- ting 2900 jobs across its Aust- ralian operations. Unions said Holden’s ‘‘devastating’’ announce- ment would leave 50,000 job- less and rip $21 billion out of the nation’s economy. It said Toyota was set to follow, with the withdrawal sounding a death knell for the Australian car industry. Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union spokesman Dave Smith said: ‘‘It’s now highly likely that Toyota will leave Australia, in fact it’s al- most certain. ‘‘Fifty thousand workers will be losing their job be- cause of a decision by Gen- eral Motors today. ‘‘It’s a very bleak day.’’ The announcement had been anticipated for months and the Federal Government had been under mounting political pressure to offer increased subsidies to the Detroit-based company to ensure it continued manufac- turing in Australia. GM’s chief executive Dan Akerson said in a statement: ‘‘The decision to end manu- facturing in Australia re- flects the perfect storm of negative influences the in- dustry faces in the country, including the sustained strength of the Australian dollar, high cost of product- ion, small domestic market and arguably the most com- petitive and fragmented auto market in the world.’’ By closing its Australian manufacturing operations, Holden will lose critical gov- ernment contracts that give preference to local car ma- kers, representing up to one- third of sales of some models. Once Holden is reduced to a sales and marketing oper- ation it is likely to be knock- ed out of the top-three selling brands for the first time since it started building cars in 1948. Holden has been the No.2 selling brand for the past 10 years behind Toyota, but is on track to post its lowest sales in 20 years and in sev- eral months this year has been overtaken by Mazda, Hyundai and Nissan. As it is, the locally-made Holden Commodore sedan and Cruze small car rank behind the Toyota Corolla and Mazda3 from Japan, the Toyota HiLux pick-up from Thailand and the Hyundai i30 hatch from South Korea in the sales race this year. The closure of the engine plant in Port Melbourne in 2016 will cost an estimated 300 jobs, while the car as- sembly line in Elizabeth in 2017 will put 1600 employees out of work. Holden boss Mike Deve- reux said GM’s decision was ‘‘irreversible’’ and sympath- ised with workers. ‘‘No matter which way we apply the numbers our long- term business case to make cars in this country is simply not viable,’’ he said. ‘‘As painful as it is to say, building cars in this country is just not sustainable . . . there is nothing I can say to anybody to take the sting out of this announcement.’’ Holden will also close its car-testing facility at Lang Lang on the southeast out- skirts of Melbourne and sack up to 1000 vehicles dynamics engineers and headquarters staff associated with pur- chasing and manufacturing. Advocates for the car manufacturing industry clai- med the Holden shutdown would wipe up to 50,000 jobs across Australia because Japanese giant Toyota would almost certainly close its fac- tories no later than 2018. The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and the Australian Manufactur- ing Workers’ Union have lob- bied for all car makers to re- ceive government subsidies. However, foreign vehicle makers build more cars, em- ploy more workers and ex- port more vehicles because they are operating in more favourable economic condit- ions, including lower wages. The taxpayer subsidies to Australian car makers aren’t internationally competitive. Disused runway makes for rough landing A PILOT landed an aero- plane on a closed Territory airstrip, a report revealed. An investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau released on Tuesday detailed how a Cessna 404 VH-HVR landed among dense vegetation near Pigeon Hole, 450km south- west of Katherine. On July 24 this year, the pilot flew from Darwin to Pigeon Hole using the elec- tronic flight planning sys- tem to generate the flight plan. According to the re- port, the landing area coordi- nates had been previously entered into the GPS, which was to be used throughout the flight to navigate. The report said the pilot left Darwin 45 minutes be- hind schedule and had re- ported feeling tired. When close to the desti- nation, the pilot noticed that the runway surface ap- peared overgrown with veg- etation but landed anyway. The plane collided with shrubs but only suffered minor damage. The pilot then flew to the correct land- ing area near Pigeon Hole. Theft suspect lashes out at store staff AN ALLEGED thief was sto- pped with a small meat tray down the back of his pants leaving a Darwin supermar- ket, but lashed out at staff when they confronted him, police said. The 33-year-old man alleg- edly stole the food from Woolworths about 6.30pm last Thursday. ‘‘And then he stored it down his pants,’’ Duty Superintendent Sachin Sharma said. ‘‘He became violent when confronted and threw punches.’’ The staff were not seriously injured. Police arrested the man and Superintendent Sharma expected him to be charged with robbery and stealing with violence. And the IGA Express store on Smith St has been broken into for the second time in the six months since it opened. Thieves stole about $2000 worth of alcohol when they got into the store in the early hours of Thursday.