[Rossba]

Sad news indeed.
I too Like Gav started my apprenticeship at Ford in 1989 and have been hearing that Ford will be closing since this day but they had manage to keep struggling.
I saw a lot of changes over the years from the shop floor work force (blue collar) halving in 10 years to the office work force (white collar) doubling then more and more job losses for the blue collar. The blue collar worker is a direct labour (makes money for the company) and the indirect labour (costs the company money) balance was out and got worse which made making any part within Ford tough. To many chiefs & not enough indians. Ford lost so much of their manufacturing business because it was not viable. Blue collar workers were on a good wage thanks to the unions which put more pressure and the machinery needed upgrading.
Then they built the AU and because of the declined sales they sacked the sales staff. Not the design staff or the ones responsible for releasing the design.
I wasn't able to buy a new Ford until the AU in 1999 and although the sales experience and car were fine the experience from the dealer's service department was so bad it put off buying another. I did how ever buy a FG ute for work and the experience was no better.
Ford had the dedicated gas cars and we didn't see any government's buying them. This could have been so much of a advantage to the Australian's as the government would have supported the car industry, local councils would had less expenses for their rate payers etc.
A fellow employee left 2 years ago and works for the armed forces now and although he is still a passionate Ford person he notices that all the governments cars in the 2 site that he works at are all fully imported cars. So how much does our government care about our industry? Only the income from cars being sold and registered.

In my opinion only Ford Australia has dug it's own hole and made it deeper and deeper over the years. They have even had crap adds.
The d' spec the cars so that people don't want them or buy other brands and then say the are discontinuing these models due to lack of sales, bad after sales service, lack of support for racing etc.

America has it's own interests to look after and Australia is suck a small market for them.