Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I waited for 15 minutes for the Leader of the Opposition to truly address this matter of public importance about cost-of-living pressures in Australia, but I have to say I respond more in sorrow than in anger, because of the inability of the opposition to come to what really matters—how you deal with cost-of-living pressures in this country. The best way to address cost-of-living pressures in Australia is to have a good job and fair pay and conditions. That is why this government certainly passes the test, in terms of creating jobs. The budget we have just introduced into the parliament has a big focus on the creation of jobs.

Let me remind the House of some of the things we are doing to assist in the creation of jobs. If you have a job in this country you have a chance to pay the bills. If you do not have a job in this country life is that much harder. In fact, in this country we have seen over the last three years, at a time that Labor has been the steward of the national economy, the creation of 750,000 jobs and we are predicting half a million new jobs to be created over the next two years. When I was a student studying economics in the mid-1980s, it was said that full employment or achieving somewhere near full employment was a matter of history and could never be the case in the future. But, in fact, we have seen in recent years the unemployment rate in Australia fall to less than five per cent. This was unimaginable a decade and a half or two decades ago. We understand that if we are to maintain this record high employment government policy needs to be focused upon jobs. That is why we are putting an extra $200 million into helping train and create further apprenticeships. That is why we are liberalising the apprenticeship system so that people complete their apprenticeships more quickly if they satisfy the requirements.

Also, we have to understand that if we want to be able to cope with the cost of living we have to have fair wages and conditions. That is why we overturned the unfair Work Choice laws. The current opposition would like to pretend that they never happened. The laws that we have now put in place ensure that people can get a reasonable minimum wage and ensure that they are free to bargain if they choose to do so. But, of course, if we are going to deal with the cost of living the story cannot just be about jobs, although I think that is the central feature of dealing with costs, and it cannot just be about dealing with fair pay and conditions. I think it also goes to what sort of tax system we have in this country. How can we ensure that people are able to have greater economic control over their own lives?

One great myth of Australian politics is that the Liberal and National parties represent small tax and somehow Labor represents high-taxing governments. The numbers tell a different story. When you look at the proportion of taxation in this country you see that in the last five years of the Howard government, between 2002 and 2007, Commonwealth tax receipts as a proportion of GDP—or, put another way, Mr Howard's tax hand in your pocket—were above 25 per cent. Indeed, from every $100,000 that the Australian economy would create under the Howard government $25,000 was going in Commonwealth tax receipts. This is in stark contrast to the years of Labor administration since 2007. In fact, as a proportion of GDP, Commonwealth tax receipts are somewhere around 21 per cent. Put another way, in plain English, we see that under a Labor government from every $100,000 that the Australian economy creates Commonwealth tax receipts are in the order of $21,000. This means that our Labor administration is the government that is ensuring that Australians have more of their wealth, not less of their wealth. We are enabling the growth of the Australian economy.

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