Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

On occasion, the member for Moncrieff, the shadow minister for small business, has delivered a passable speech in this parliament, but I thought that was a particularly dusty effort. He obviously had a good time at the midwinter ball last night and is just not firing today. But he made a number of points on an MPI which is about the government’s support for small business, and I would just like to take members in the chamber through a couple of statements that he made in his contribution.

The member for Moncrieff said that there are far fewer working people these days. Let us understand what is going on here: this is part of a coordinated effort by coalition members to talk the economy down—to pretend to present to the Australian people that the total number of employed people in this country has fallen in the last few months. These are the sorts of claims that have been made by the shadow Treasurer, who at one point claimed that employment had fallen by 80,000 people. Indeed, it was one of these auctions where the shadow finance minister, Senator Coonan, on Sky News Sunday Agenda on 3 May said:

What have we seen, in fact 154,000 jobs lost just since October.

Yet again we have got the shadow Treasurer, the shadow finance minister and now the shadow small business minister all asserting that jobs have been lost since last year. Let us have a look at some of the facts. Between October of last year and May of this year, the total number of people employed has fallen by 24,000, not by 80,000 as claimed by the shadow Treasurer and not by 154,000 as claimed by the shadow finance minister.

I ask members in the parliament to imagine what the total number of jobs lost—the reduction in employment—is in the 12 months to May of this year. I suppose that people, if they were listening to the coalition, would say, ‘Well, it might be 20,000 less or 30,000 or 40,000 less.’ In truth, in that period—in the last year—total employment has grown by 35,000. There is employment growth in this country.

From the change of government in November 2007 until the latest figures, which became available in May, the total number of employed people has risen by 145,000. If you were listening to the coalition, you would never pick that, would you? They are always talking the economy down. I have been asked for evidence of the coalition talking the economy down. There is no clearer evidence of the coalition knowing the truth—the figures are produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—than the shadow finance minister, the shadow Treasurer and now the small business minister all asserting that there has been a big reduction in employment in this country. There is no more irresponsible way of talking the economy down than coalition MPs coming to this place and trying to tell people that they are going to lose their jobs because there has been a big reduction in employment in this country.

The coalition would rather see the people of Australia fail than see the government succeed—that is the problem. The only jobs that they are concerned about are the jobs of 30 coalition frontbenchers. I understand that the composition of the front bench is going to change fairly soon, because I remember the deputy leader of the Liberal Party saying, only a few days ago, that the problem with the Labor Party—

See this speech in context