General Motors-Holden in 2017 the last of big South Australian manufacturers from Playford era to shut
The last vehicle (inset), a Commodore, off the General Motors-Holden Elizabeth plant assembly line in 2017. Above: Elizabeth production workers with a 1932 Chevrolet Roadster, built by General Motors Holden at the Adelaide suburb of Woodville, and part of the Holden Dream Cruise to farewell the Elizabeth plant.
Main image by Russell Millard
When Tom Playford stepped down as premier in 1965, South Australia's population had doubled from 600,000 in the late 1930s to 1.1 million, the highest growth rate among the states. The economy and personal wealth increased at the same rate, second only to Victoria.
During Playford's 27 years in power, jobs in manufacturing in South Australia had increased by 173%. (Western Australia was second with 155% and the national average 129%.) The state's share of Australia's manufacturing sector increased from 7.7% to 9.2%. But Playford was criticised for not diversifying the state’s secondary industries enough, relying too much on car making with Holden and Chrysler making up 15% of the economy.
The lowering of Australian import tariffs in the 1980s would severely expose the Australian car industry and other manufacturing. General Motors-Holden plant at Elizabeth, in 2017, would be the last of a list of big manufacturers lost by South Australia from the Playford era: British Tube Mills, Bridgestone Australia, Chrysler Australia (followed by Mitsubishi car makers), Phillips Industries and more.
The other criticism was that Playford had concentrated too much on attracting overseas and interstate companies. But South Australian-born companies continued to be vulnerable to the bigger economies of scale from interstate.
The South Australian industrial giant Adelaide Steamship was a prime example of being wiped out by the 1980s corporate excesses propelled by outside forces.
Even in 1966, a year after the death of Frank Perry, one of Playford’s influential advisers on industrialisation, Perry Engineering was merged with the Melbourne firm of Johns and Waygood Holdings. In the end, Playford couldn’t control state capitalism as much as his state socialism.
