Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to have this debate about jobs, the most important thing in Australia. This is a debate about jobs, and every time we have a debate in this place about jobs the opposition get it wrong. We had debates in this place in 2008 and 2009 about jobs, about what it would take to make sure the economy did not go into recession and to protect Australian jobs. We took the action that was necessary to stop a recession and to protect Australian jobs. The opposition took the opposite position. They decided to oppose the stimulus package, which would, if we had accepted the opposition’s advice, have cost 200,000 Australians their jobs—that is two Olympic stadiums full of people, or two electorates represented in this parliament.

In that debate, back in April 2009, the member for North Sydney, the shadow Treasurer, said:

… 300,000 Australians are going to lose their job in its—

the government’s—

first term.

What happened? Because of the action that the government took, faced with the greatest economic crisis in 75 years, more than 700,000 more Australians have a job today than when the government took office just over three years ago—despite the GFC.

They have made the same mistakes when it comes to the mineral resource rent tax. The scare campaign has been running now for close to 12 months. We keep hearing the story about how miners are going to lose their jobs. Since the government has announced the mineral resource rent tax, employment in mining has already grown by 10.3 per cent. Despite the Liberal scare campaign, companies are still investing in mining because they know it has a strong future. There are 18,690 more mining jobs today than before that tax was announced.

If you want to go into history to have a look at how the Liberal Party performs when you have great economic structural debates about how to improve the economy, you need go no further than the debate that this parliament had in the early nineties about compulsory superannuation. I went back and looked at those debates to see what the Liberal Party said then.

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