Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

But like the member for Goldstein I have not got people complaining to me about schools. They would like more investment in the schools and they would like to see a greater role for the Commonwealth, although there will be budget limits to that. What we are doing, apart from putting money out there that is generating jobs, is producing those skills for the future.

I do not want to have to do a roll call through the family but I also have a son—not the son working in the mines—who is a builder. For the last 12 months or so all he has been doing, in a succession of schools, is going out there and constructing school buildings. All the young fellows I know who come to our house and eat us out of house and home are also working on these packages. From the Hayes household, I know what the stimulus package is doing. It means that these young people are in work. They are utilising their skills. I see more apprentices out there. This was the intention of the stimulus package. It is not what the other side I know want to hear. They are nitpicking, going through whether the projects should have been six metres this side or that side of the fence or whether somebody’s sunlight has been blocked off. This was about generating jobs and generating jobs now to stimulate work in our community. All those employees getting work through these stimulus based projects are generating our local economies.

I would have thought that concept was something that we should be applauded for. I know it is a bit hard for those on the other side to applaud because they voted against it and every other measure of the stimulus package, but they are things that really do need to be looked at in the cold light of day and acknowledged for what they are, apart from an investment in education. Bear in mind that every dollar you put into education will over the next 10 to 12 years actually have an economic dividend in a productivity increase and will generate people through tertiary education or into the trades et cetera. What it does is generate employment for us here and now. I see it firsthand, as does everyone else, but those opposite are too afraid to admit it.

The other big thing that is clearly on the way back, if you listen to what is being said, is a return to Work Choices. Perhaps that is not the word that will be used, but we are now being lectured about there being room to have individual statutory employment contracts out there in the workplace. Mr Deputy Speaker, as you are aware, I was very involved in talking about ‘Your rights at work’ when we were in opposition because I genuinely believe in it. I represent a working community. I see the mums and dads out there struggling with their mortgages. Most households in my electorate are supported by two incomes. I know how important this issue was. I also had—and I tried to table on many occasions for Prime Minister Howard—work statements from people who were getting paid less than the award. For the first time in living memory, it became legally possible to employ people and to change their conditions to below the award. I—and no doubt many other people too—have had people turn up in my office, or I have seen them in the street when I have been doing mobile offices, who have become physically and emotionally upset. I saw the real effect of that.

I cannot point the finger just at those companies. When I spoke to the directors of one of the companies—it is on the record; I will not name the company again but it is a major pharmaceutical company—they checked through the law and they came out and said, ‘Yes, we are doing that.’ I asked them for the reason they were doing it. I said: ‘I can see your profit line and I can see all the other stuff. Why are you doing this to people in my local community?’ Regrettably, and with some degree of embarrassment, they said, ‘Because we can.’ The previous government made laws that allowed people to pay individuals below the award rate of pay. I saw the effect of that in electorates such as mine. Those in the previous government should hold their heads in shame. I understand why they would not want to go back to calling it Work Choices, but they must be reeling from the fact that their leader has now indicated that there is room for individual contracts in the workplace.

Despite all the joviality about Tony Abbott’s contribution to the 7.30 Report on Monday a week ago, if we have to get to the point where, unless it is scripted, unless you get it from me in writing, you cannot believe it, this is going to be an extremely low ebb in politics. We all know what the cut and thrust of politics is like. It is a very combative business that we are in. It is a hard business. We are out there to compete for the hearts and minds of people based on our ideals. We are trying to sell the ideals to people in this competitive world that we support one over the other. That is the basis of democracy. But, when we have the Leader of the Opposition coming out and saying, ‘You cannot necessarily trust everything I say unless you get it in writing,’ it really demeans our whole concept of Australian democracy. I know he probably was not put up to that, and it is probably a rare display of honesty, one which will not go away, but if a backbencher said that I am sure the whips would take them aside and explain to them the error of their ways. But, when the Leader of the Opposition says it, you wonder whether that is now going to become opposition policy.

One of the things I wanted to get across was community building. What we have tried to do throughout the course of our response to the world’s worst economic crisis is to continue to build our community. Build it now and build it into the future is what this budget continues to do. (Time expired)

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