Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation and Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The matter of public importance mentions putting Australian jobs at risk. I have listened very carefully to the Assistant Treasurer, and in 15 minutes he has not once mentioned jobs. It is a word that Labor ministers are unable to utter. They are like the Fonz—they are unable to say, ‘I was wrong.’ It is the phrase that they just cannot say. It is extraordinary that ministers of the Labor Party are unable to ever talk about jobs.

I would like to briefly talk about the record of the Howard government and the situation that the Labor government received on 25 November 2007. What we saw was that inflation over the period of the Howard government averaged 2.4 per cent. That compares with an inflation average under the Hawke and Keating governments of 5.2 per cent. Unemployment, when John Howard came to office, was 8.4 per cent. It fell to 4.2 per cent, which was the lowest level since November 1974—the lowest level in 33 years. During the period that John Howard was Prime Minister and Peter Costello was Treasurer, 2.2 million jobs were created—1.2 million of those jobs were full time. We saw real wages grow by over 20 per cent. Compare this with under the Hawke-Keating governments, where real wages actually fell during the 13 years of those previous Labor governments.

The Howard government inherited the budgetary position of a $10 billion budget deficit and a $96 billion government debt. The government debt was eliminated in 2006, and the Labor government did not inherit any government debt. Peter Costello, as Treasurer, after inheriting a $10 billion budget deficit, delivered budget surpluses in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. When Labor came to office, it inherited a budget surplus of over $20 billion. But what have we seen in the nine months since Kevin Rudd came to office? We have seen business confidence collapse. We have seen consumer confidence collapse. We now see those levels of confidence at their lowest level since the 1991-92 recession.

We are talking on a matter of public importance about jobs. I will give you a big tip here: we will not hear any Labor minister or any Labor speaker address the job situation, because over the last nine months Labor’s performance on jobs has been a disgrace. It is shameful. We have had employment growth running at 2½ per cent. About 250,000 jobs have been created in Australia each year since 2002. The budget forecast that employment growth would be half that, that unemployment would rise and that the labour force would actually contract. But it gets worse. The Reserve Bank in its August statement on monetary policy predicts that employment growth will fall further than what was forecast in the budget in only May—meaning that only 80,000 jobs will be created over the year. So we have gone from very strong jobs growth for five to six years to very anaemic jobs growth in the nine months that the Labor party has been in office.

The budget forecasts are that by the end of June the Treasurer, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and the Prime Minister will have a labour force smaller—with 134,000 fewer jobs—than what they had 12 months previously. Based on the Reserve Bank forecasts, it is predicted that an additional 100,000 Australians will lose their jobs over the next 12 months. But if the number of new jobseekers rises at the same rate it has over recent years, up to an additional 175,000 people may be out of work.

We have also seen, since the Rudd government came to office, more than 14,000 Australians made redundant. We have had some MPIs on jobs in the past, so I might just talk about some of the workers that have been made redundant just in the last three months: 150 workers at Clipsal in Nurioopta in South Australia made redundant; 600 workers at South Pacific Tyres in Somerton made redundant; 14 workers at Waverly Woollen Mills made redundant; 129 workers at Gunns made redundant; 600 workers at Insurance Australia Group made redundant; more than 100 workers at Cooper Standard Automotive made redundant; 1,500 workers lost from Qantas; 105 workers gone from CommScope in Brisbane; 685 Starbucks workers gone across Australia; 130 workers lost their jobs at Dartmoor sawmill; 640 workers gone at Don smallgoods in Melbourne and Western Australia; Motorway Tyres in Stawell, Victoria, made redundant 42 workers; at Holden 530 workers lost their jobs; at Boral Timber 46 workers lost their jobs; at Constellation Wines in South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria up to 350 workers lost their jobs; and at SPC Ardmona 60 workers lost their jobs. The list goes on and on—at Cadbury 160 workers in Hobart and 25 workers in Melbourne lost their jobs; at Ford 300 to 350 workers in Geelong and Broadmeadows lost their jobs; at Parilia in Broken Hill 440 workers lost their jobs; at Babcock and Brown 400 workers lost their jobs; at Kenworth trucks 80 workers lost their jobs; at Fairfax Media 550 jobs have gone; at PBR in East Bentley 80 jobs have gone; and at Telstra in Geelong 100 jobs have gone.

That is Labor’s track record. It is impossible to read the whole list. They are just the workers who have had redundancies. I do not hear a lot from the Labor Party about these jobs. Quite frankly, it astounds me that the Labor Party have nothing to say about jobs. We had a very strong environment of jobs growth and Labor have trashed that in nine months. But we also see that, in the area of employment services, the new government are planning to spend less on employment services—the Job Network. Job Network had great results in finding people a job. The new government are planning to spend $279 million less on helping people to find a job over the three years from 2009. It is a very simple equation: more people are out of work, more people are losing their jobs, and the Labor government are spending less money on employment services and less money on helping people to get back into work. They have wound back mutual obligation. They have made it much harder for people to do Work for the Dole. If someone does not turn up to job interviews, or someone does not turn up to work experience, they lose a day’s pay and will not have any further action taken. At every point Labor have made the compliance regime much weaker.

Let us have a look at how out of touch the Labor Party are. We heard the Minister for Finance and Deregulation say, just over a week ago:

The overall employment figures are still very robust and we anticipate that they will continue to be in good shape.

This was after the recent job losses—14,000 workers losing their jobs. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, speaking on RBA forecasts which showed job losses of between 100,000 to 175,000, called that a ‘slight softening of the labour market’. On the redundancies, she said, ‘there are some pockets of companies with particular redundancy problems and lay-offs’. She just dismissed it. That is a disgrace from the Labor Party. The Labor Party should feel that they are able to talk truthfully about what is happening in the labour market. There is massive job insecurity there. We expect 100,000 workers to lose their jobs over the next— (Time expired)

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