I think it honestly depends on the political climate at the time: If it looks like a heap of truckers will lose their jobs, the government might step in and try

I think it honestly depends on the political climate at the time: If it looks like a heap of truckers will lose their jobs, the government might step in and try and legislate sideways for jobs to remain - think mandating an operator for safety reasons. I'm not a national of Australia but spent a significant amount of time there in the lower echelons of the auto industry; There the government could see that the local auto manufacturing industry was being priced out by lower-cost SEA operations, and not wanting to have "hard-working Aussies" lose their jobs while in power, were pressured into heavily subsidising (> 40%) some factory workers' salaries. A couple of party changes later and this was wound back, and almost immediately the two largest employers in the sector announced they were pulling out. The net result was that instead of some workers losing their jobs gradually, or the plants freezing hires and people seeing this an being incentivised to look at alternate industries for light-labour positions, several thousand workers are expected to be laid off all at once some time next year - fodder for a media shit-storm. It's a bit off the topic, but the question is, where would those workers be if the government subsidies were instead used for educating/re-training?