Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Banks said, ‘put a fence around it’—and you could actually question that in some of the policies that the previous government put forward.

The comparison is the Rudd government knows that Australia is a country that operates in a global economy. We are part of the rest of the world. Our banking system, our manufacturing industry and all of the commercial markets within Australia are impacted on by what is happening throughout the world. That is what the opposition do not seem to get. They do not get the simple fact that the problems that are leading to increased unemployment are not caused by the Rudd government; it is a phenomenon happening worldwide. They need only to look at the US and the UK to see that the situation there is much worse. In the US, President Obama has cited the response by Australia as a response that is worthy of following. In other words: our approach, the measures that we have put in place, is a model for the rest of the world.

It just shows that the member for Boothby, who I think is the shadow spokesman, has such a narrow approach, has such a lack of understanding of the issues, that he seemed to miss this. I was extremely disappointed by the contributions from the other side. The other thing that came across very clearly to me is that they are still the slaves of Work Choices. They are still out there promoting Work Choices as the solution to the problem of unemployment. As long as they have that approach, we are going nowhere. Unemployment is increasing at the moment under the opposition’s legislation. They are very good at attributing blame, but they will not take any responsibility. And they think that if they sit back and complain that maybe, just maybe, they might be able to protect their own jobs and not have to be accountable to the people they represent in this parliament.

As I have mentioned, they have opposed just about everything. They opposed the last stimulus package, which was about creating jobs and building infrastructure—something that they chose to ignore during their term of government. Not only did they ignore the fact that a time of prosperity is when you prepare the nation for times when things are not quite so good by building infrastructure and ensuring that your workforce has the skills that it needs for the future, they also sat back and were too lazy to do anything to ensure that Australia did not end up in a bad position. As one of the other speakers in the debate, I think it was the member for Braddon, said, the opposition are very good at blaming the states. I have often been in this chamber and speaker after speaker has stood up and talked about legislation, made an adjournment speech or a three-minute statement, and they have blamed the states. I do not suppose anything different has happened in the lead-up to the Queensland election. I would be forgiven for believing that we were debating in the Queensland parliament, so please forgive me for that. The members that have spoken in a number of debates today have really missed the point of what this is all about.

When we are talking about increasing unemployment, the state that had the greatest increase in unemployment was Western Australia and Western Australia had a Liberal government. I am not seeking to attribute blame to that Liberal government because I know how dependent the economy of Western Australia is on the export of minerals and its relationship to the rest of the world. So I accept that fact and I am not going to say it is because of the Western Australian Liberal government. But I would like to guarantee this House today that if I were a member of the opposition and I was referring to a state Labor government then I would be up here blaming that increase in unemployment on that Labor government.

It seems that those on the other side of this House are only any good at carping, blaming anyone else and coming up with no solutions other than recommending the Commonwealth take responsibility for an area that the states control. I remember back in 1996-97 when this legislation was introduced and, at that time, I thought it was a little harsh.

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