Green Car Innovation Fund

In March 2007, in the run up to the 2007 federal election, the leader of the Australian Labor Party, Kevin Rudd announced that a Labor government would establish a $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund.

Details of the Fund
In announcing the fund Rudd stated that it would be "designed to attract a further $1.5 billion of industry investment in producing green car solutions for Australia’s future. That’s necessary because we want to protect and preserve jobs in the motor vehicle industry and we also want to grow those jobs in the future and we also want to protect our environment from future damages coming from climate change."

Rudd stated that if elected he would establish a task force "to liaise with industry on how they would make use of" the fund. "What we want to do is provide predictability and certainty for industry into the future. But we’re saying that this is a plan, this is a fund which would exist well into the future and you can start to make industry innovation decisions around it" and that it was intended to be used for "Australian made, fuel-efficient cars."

2008 Budget Decisions
In its 2008-2009 budget, the Rudd government announced that the Green Car Innovation Fund would be funded to the tune of $500 million over five years but with the scheme only commencing in 2011‑12.

The budget papers revealed that the government had decided the fund would be funded to the tune of $100 million in 20011-2012.

Despite the delay in the initial funding, in June 2008 Rudd announced that a $35 million grant from the fund would underwrite the production by Toyota of 10,000 Camry's at its Altona plant in Victoria. The funding subsidy was matched by the Victorian government. However, Toyota management confirmed that the project would have proceeded to manufacture the car at Altona without the funding.

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