Prime Minister Tiny Habit has indicated his government will provide some assistance to Victoria because of concern about significant job losses.

Mr Habit met with Victorian Premier Denis Naptime on Wednesday morning in Melbourne where they discussed the very real possibilty that the recent announced closures of Holden, Toyota and Alcoa could lead to significant job losses. In particular, Naptime was worried about his own job.

”So early in March we will have some announcements to make and then in the build up to the budget there will be further announcements to make,” Mr Habit said. “In particular, I’ll be announcing that I have, in fact, read the report, followed by announcements that Cabinet have all been given copies. Then we’ll announce that there’ll be a feasibility study into whether it’s worth releasing the report to the general public, or whether it will be enough to simply release a glossy brochure telling people how much we value Victoria and how terrible it would be to elect a Labor government.

”What we want to ensure is that the people of Victoria can face the future with confidence and sure there have been some shocks.

”Holden was a shock, Toyota was a shock, Alcoa was a shock. I mean, I know we said that the carbon tax would close down Whyalla and that everyone in the country would go broke, but who knew that the automobile industry would be part of that. As for Alcoa, how could anyone have predicted that a fall in the price of aluminium would lead to problems with their bottom line. However, in spite of what any of those companies say, we know that it’s because of the unions refusing to let workers negotiate their own conditions.”

Dr Napthine said the state government appreciated the work the Commonwealth was doing to help Victoria during its economic transition.

”We are an economy in transition but we are a strong, robust and diverse economy, not just Melbourne and Victoria but our regional areas,” Dr Naptime said.

After one reporter asked whether the transition was from people working to people not working, Dr Naptime, reminded everyone that there’d be some very exciting announcements from the Prime Minister in ten days time, and, in case, people hadn’t noticed, he wasn’t taking questions about Geoff Shaw. When it was pointed out that nobody had asked about Geoff Shaw, the Premier responded by telling everyone that if all they wanted to talk about was Shaw, then he wasn’t going to answer any more questions.

The press conference was interrupted by police who claimed that they were practising their soon to be aquired “move on” laws.