Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take the interjection from the member opposite. I would suggest that he take the time—we have known each other for a while—to read my biography. I take the member’s interjection that he is calling all members of the community who are members of a union ‘hacks’. I appreciate that contribution. At the end of the day, this is an opposition which want to put forward an MPI about economic credibility, while their own actions indicate they have absolutely none at all. What they need to understand is that there are a few things they actually could do which would be in the great tradition of their party, including supporting the budget measures in the Senate that will allow that budget surplus to stay in place. That would be a good and sensible start if they want to create some economic credibility with which to enter this debate.

The second thing is that the opposition need to understand that there are some real long-term challenges that we need to address in terms of the prosperity of our economy over the long term. Clearly, one of those is productivity. Productivity has stalled. It has stalled because we walked away from investing in the human capital of our nation and from understanding that, if you improve the education and skills levels of our communities, not only are they more productive but you do not create skills blockages, which have been occurring in my own area in the last week. Media reports have revealed that major projects and major businesses cannot get the skills they need. That has been a problem for a significant time and Labor have some policies in place to address that. When the opposition want to enter into a debate about the best way to deliver those policies then I think they will have some credibility.

The other area is infrastructure. Indeed, I sat on the then House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services. We brought down an excellent report—under the chair at the time, Paul Neville, the member for Hinkler—that outlined the major problems with rail infrastructure that needed to be addressed. One of the major requirements was the creation of a national coordinating infrastructure body. We heard it everywhere we went from every one of the major players in infrastructure. We have delivered on that. We are moving on it. We have a platform being delivered through the budget by the government for the future economic wellbeing of this country. All the opposition are doing is sniping and playing populist games. Until they get some credibility on economic issues they cannot expect to come into this place and be all things to all people and not be economically credible. (Time expired)

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