Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services) Share this | Hansard source

There is no doubt today, in listening to this MPI debate, that someone has got to be wrong. Of course, the opposition could not countenance that they might be wrong. In fact, they would have you believe that the National Farmers Federation, the Retailers Association and the builders associations—all of these people—are wrong and that the business interests are wrong. In fact, nation building and jobs for Australia have been an objective for the Labor Party for as long as we have been in existence. The Rudd government has continued this tradition because it believes that preserving employment is not just an economic responsibility but indeed a social responsibility. The unemployed are not just statistics; they are individuals and families struggling with uncertainty and despair.

I waited futilely to hear the strategies of the opposition to provide hope to people whose jobs are threatened by this current crisis, and no help was forthcoming, I am afraid to say. A rising unemployment rate is not just an indicator of an economic crisis; it is a crisis in itself. We believe the government can, through acting decisively, preserve the jobs of Australians and keep our economy growing. No-one can argue against the proposition that the achievement of supporting existing jobs and creating new ones is in fact a more difficult task today than it was in those long, languorous years of the long boom of the Howard government. The problems caused by the global economic conditions make our mission to secure jobs more important than ever. When families and individuals are experiencing uncertainty about job security, anxiety about guaranteed income and fear of being unable to work, what they require from government is a pro-jobs strategy.

It is a fact that every country across the globe is affected by this current financial crisis. Growth will fall, jobs will be threatened and budgets will be pressured—there is no quick fix to this global recession. Governments around the world are grappling with this issue of how best to tackle it, developing packages for the individual circumstances that their countries face.

We on this side of the House understand that the people who are most at risk in hard times are those who have more limited training and the weakest attachment to the labour market. When unemployment rose in earlier decades, the increase in the unemployment rate for those without higher education was considerably higher than for those people who had it. Fighting unemployment is not done by cutting wages and conditions. It is not done by delay and obfuscation. It is done by improving the skills of workers. We are building a country in which there are many different ways to be educated and in which every Australian can find a pathway into learning which enriches their opportunities, but we have a long way to go before we can achieve this, especially after the 11 years of the enforced political narcolepsy of the conservatives.

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