The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) says Australia risks not having a local car industry in as little as five years if the Federal Government does not act.
The car industry has met federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane and asked for tariffs to be frozen at 10 per cent and for a further $1 billion to be pumped into the industry.
The AMWU's secretary in South Australia, John Camillo, says the local industry is in crisis, with car makers struggling to compete with foreign competitors.
"We can not afford for the automotive tariffs to be reduced by a further 50 per cent," he said.
"We see at the moment, out of pretty close to a million, only 20 per cent or 21 per cent are locally produced vehicles.
"If it continues this sliding scale we won't have a car industry over the next five to 10 years."
Mr Camillo says the low proportion of locally produced cars should be a warning to the Government.
"We've seen the third shift at Holden disappear, we've seen the loss of 1,400 jobs, we've seen over 1,000 jobs [lost] at Mitsubishi and just recently at Ford we've seen the loss of 500 jobs," he said.
"Now if this isn't showing danger signs to the Federal Government that the car industry is in crisis, I don't know what you need to do to a Federal Government to wake them up."
