Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

some not very high levels of employment through minor local projects, and he highlighted three particular areas where the government may have done a little.

However, what he failed to address is the forecast that unemployment is going to dramatically increase. In its latest economic outlook, the OECD has forecast a prolonged downturn, heralding weak prospects for labour demand. As was indicated by the shadow minister, the projected outlook is that the unemployment rate will drive up from its October level of 4.3 per cent to 5.8 per cent by the end of next year and six per cent in late 2010. It has been predicted that 140,000 people will lose their jobs over the coming months as a result of the crisis, and yet the government has continued to fail to come up with any solutions.

All the minister has done is to turn on the member for Stirling, to heap abuse upon his shoulders and to accuse him of not having the answers. Frankly, I can understand why the minister is asking the honourable member for Stirling for answers: because the minister himself and the Deputy Prime Minister do not have any answers between them. At least the Minister for Employment Participation had the courage to crawl into the chamber and purport to represent the government. I do not know where the Deputy Prime Minister is, but she is not where she should be—and where she should have been is at the dispatch box, at 5.13 today, to respond to what the opposition was saying.

The Australian people elected the Rudd Labor government with high expectations. The Australian people expected answers. At the first challenge to that government, the global economic crisis, we find that the government’s performance has faltered. The Prime Minister trips around the world talking at conferences, and yet at home the situation is quite dire. I challenge the minister to get out of his ivory tower, to go out there and talk to the Australian people, to talk to people who are concerned about employment. The minister, in his speech, spoke at length about assistance packages to pensioners, to carers—to all sorts of people. However, he did not address the need for jobs.

The best way to create jobs is to have a robust economy, such as the economy that the Howard-Costello government implemented over 11 years of office. We repaid $90 billion of Labor debt. We created two million jobs. Most of them were full-time jobs, but there were also part-time jobs. Yet we find that it is now projected that, under the stewardship of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Employment Participation, we could have a situation where that shocking record under the Keating government of having a million Australians out of work could well be replicated.

Is this what the Australian people voted for on 24 November last year? It certainly is not. They would certainly be disappointed, and I see the situation as being quite shocking. In fact it is a disgrace, because—let us face it—the Labor Party claim to be the party that is interested in the worker. They brought in the Fair Work Bill yesterday and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations focused on union rights. She focused on extra costs to business. She basically introduced a bill that will cost jobs.

See this speech in context