Speaking with one voice

If you're going to have someone fighting your corner it's best to have someone who doesn't feel it is a corner but is, in fact, the cornerstone of a nation.

Richard Dudley is the chief executive officer of the newly formed Australian Motor Industry Federation (AMIF), and his mission is to keep everyone aware that the motor industry literally provides and maintains the wheels that keep this country operational.

The AMIF has superseded the MTAA as the national voice of the motor industry. Dudley has a challenging role as captain of a league of varied businesses with sometimes polar business imperatives. For instance, dealer groups and their competitors in the independent sector.

Not surprisingly, his background is in communication, starting out as a print and broadcast journalist and then moving into public relations where he continued to have dealings with government officials. AP&P asked him about the role of the AMIF and why MTA membership matters.

“The federal parliament takes the car for granted, and what I want to do is reintroduce the industry back to the politicians, right down to grass roots levels,” said Dudley.

“AMIF staff will be having meetings with every single parliamentarian and showing them just how many motoring-related businesses there are in their electorate. We will make sure they know how significant the industry is, and remind them that many of these people are the cream of their business community. That way, when we do go into see them about a significant issue, they have some background awareness.

“A lot of people think that the art form of government relations is that you’ve got to get your association in front of the minister. I don’t subscribe to that.

AMIF will also build relationships at bureaucratic level and get inside the departments themselves to work with those people who are actually looking at legislation and policy. We will be proactive – making suggestions about policy that will be beneficial to the industry before it is formed, rather than just reacting to legislation when it is announced.

“Another consideration that I will introduce to the membership is whether government should be getting so involved in our industry, because we might not always like the outcome. I believe that if we have the will, there are many issues we can sort out ourselves.

“However we are operating in technically challenging times – what a car is made of and does today is so incredibly different to even 15 years ago. Business are having to adapt to these changes that are being forced upon it.

It’s making life difficult and is hard to understand what government is thinking about. Some of these issues are at state level, and that’s where the MTA gets involved. However on a national front, when you get things like ‘cash for clunkers’ dreamt up during an election campaign to attract the green vote, that’s where we step in.”

Dudley commented on a government department in Canberra currently looking into a product stewardship program specifically for tyres. “We are telling them to look at the whole picture and consider a whole end of life vehicle policy, rather than just for one component,” he said. “That’s what we want to get our teeth into,  steering government to take a less piecemeal approach and to come up with well thought-out programs with proper support funding for industry.

“While we concentrate on big-ticket items that are of national importance to the industry, sometimes smaller things permeate up through the state trade organisations that we represent.

We are one voice for the motor industry, and that’s important in Canberra. You can have differences of opinion within that single voice – but you have to have a single voice so that government knows where to go to get the information it wants.
“We represent 100,000 businesses employing well over 310,000 people with an aggregated turnover of $160 billion – that is not inconsiderable. If we don’t have a voice in Canberra, government will produce policy blind to the effect it will have on the motor sector.

“There are few countries in the world that have such reliance on the motor vehicle. This country is vast – without cars, motorbikes and trucks to link the communities, what is there?”