ALP would have fought for Toyota: Shorten

Labor might have been able to save or at least prolong the jobs of thousands of Toyota manufacturing workers, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says.

Following the car maker's decision to cease production in Australia by the end of 2017, Mr Shorten rejected suggestions the nation's economic environment was to blame and said the federal government should have done more to assist the company.

"We would have worked on a transition that would have seen this bad news avoided," Mr Shorten told the ABC.

"And even if it wasn't possible in the long term to achieve it there's a big difference between Labor and Liberal: we won't stop fighting for people's jobs until we've turned over every rock and we've tried every trick."

Some 2500 jobs are understood to be directly impacted by Toyota's decision.

The Labor leader said it is in the national interest to keep people in work and that a subsidy scheme is appropriate for Australia's automotive manufacturing sector.