Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this matter of public importance today because it goes to the failure of the Rudd Labor government to create, protect and support jobs. As Phil Coorey pointed out in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

TODAY’S federal budget will forecast a record deficit of $58 billion for next financial year while also claiming that the Government’s stimulus packages will save 200,000 people from losing their jobs.

Sounds good, but here’s the rub:

With the two stimulus packages worth a combined $52 billion, the average cost of each job saved—

wait for it—

will be $260,000.

So, on their own figures, to do anything about these jobs will cost $260,000 per job.

As I have said a number of times in this place, the Labor Party walk around this country pretending that they are the friend of the worker. They would have you believe, Mr Deputy Speaker, that they are the party for the workers. Well, they might have been in the past, when real people like Mick Young did wash their hands in Solvol, but in this place today they are all academics, ex-staffers and ex union officials who do not have grassroots working backgrounds. They are the people that are in this place today and they use workers rather than treat workers as their real friends.

The fact of the matter is that, if the Labor Party were true to workers, they would make sure workers had a job. But their record on this is abysmal. Every time the Labor Party gets into government, both at a federal and a state level, what happens? Unemployment goes up. We know that in the Keating years unemployment went to nearly 11 per cent.

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