Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I am sure that the member for Bendigo has moved this motion responsibly, but I do not understand how he can defend what he has put in relation to the policies of the current government. Look at the first point in this motion:

(1) notes the need for Australian businesses to be globally competitive ...

Of course we need to have Australian businesses globally competitive, but how can you do that with Labor’s dismantling of workplace reforms and ripping up of Australian workplace agreements? That has placed the economy at a much greater risk and made it much less competitive in relation to the world than what it would otherwise have been. It certainly does not serve to secure Australia’s prosperity after the current resources boom. The government’s budget and policies are directly threatening jobs.

Ripping up AWAs and reducing workplace flexibility actually threatens the source of so much prosperity in North Queensland, in my home city of Townsville and elsewhere in Australia. In earlier decades, Australia was held back by high numbers of strikes. We all remember the nineties. In 1996, 131.5 working days per 1,000 employees were lost to industrial action. In 2006, after a decade of the Howard government, just 14.6 days were lost for the same number of employees. That is a wonderful result and a testament to the effectiveness of the Howard government’s workplace relations policies. A flexible industrial relations system has been the core factor in the increase in resources industry investment. Without the right economic conditions in Australia, resource companies will look to invest in projects elsewhere, and North Queensland and the rest of Australia will lose out.

This motion has been long on rhetoric but has ignored the key fact that business confidence is suffering at the hands of the new Labor government. A survey released earlier this year indicated employers were becoming nervous and losing the confidence to employ staff. Figures from Sensis show that support among small businesses for government policies plummeted 34 percentage points to a net balance of negative five per cent in February 2008, which is the biggest fall recorded in the history of the business index since 1993. That is the result of the current government.

The Olivier Job Index, which records the number of jobs advertised, fell for the first time in three years. Trades and services were among the hardest hit, falling 14.5 per cent, while hospitality, tourism and travel were down 7.5 per cent last month alone. That is not a very good CV for the current government. ANZ Job Advertisement Series figures show that the total number of jobs advertised in major metropolitan newspapers and on the internet declined by two per cent in February. These figures are a clear reflection of the damage an inexperienced Labor government can have on local businesses and, of course, on our world competitiveness. There is a real possibility that unemployment will rise under Labor. In fact, it was forecast in the budget. How many hundreds of thousands of people are going to be tossed out of work? We talk about working families; we will be talking about unemployed families in the not too distant future.

I also want to draw attention to the fourth point:

(4) notes the Government’s election commitments and subsequent policy announcements about measures to improve national productivity including public investment in education, skills training and national infrastructure;

Do you know what the current government have done in my electorate in relation to skills training? Do you know what they have done? They have got hold of the best-performing Australian technical college in Australia—there are 300 kids there doing their skills training—and they took away the funding for next year. It is gone. It is finished. The best-performing skills training centre that we have ever had in North Queensland has been told, ‘Sorry, there is no more money.’ The North Queensland Australian Technical College now has to try to convince the state government to fund it.

Our NQATC has of course been industry based. It has done a far better job than the technical colleges that exist in the north. We have had a huge retention rate of 85 per cent, compared to an overall retention rate in Queensland of 78.5 per cent. Ninety-seven per cent of retained students signed onto Australian School-based Apprenticeships at a certificate III level, and demand for apprentices from the college was very high. This year over 150 local businesses and community organisations are directly involved with the college. It is a magnificent result. The kids and their parents are just doing so well. We are training in the core skills areas that are needed, and this government stands condemned for taking away their funding.

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