Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Hansard source

So four times the debt ceiling was raised. Why has the government raised the debt ceiling? You raise the debt ceiling because you have to be prudent enough not to actually hit the top of that ceiling, go over it and cause the inevitable results with rating agencies. Total government debt on issue is well over $250 billion—that is the government's gross debt—and with further spending for projects such as the National Broadband Network, which I know is officially off balance sheet but it still costs the Australian taxpayer, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, who knows where the figure will land in May next year.

The coalition is taking, as I said, a fiscally responsible approach to this legislation. We recognise the importance of GEERS because we created GEERS. We know the good work that GEERS has done in our communities when all else has failed. I have two examples when GEERS was a lifesaver in my own electorate in the past few years alone. But this exercise of the government's is a tribute to its union bosses and the future negotiating power of those union bosses when it comes to workplace conditions, including redundancy. It is capturing that in the scope of what is a bill that should look after employees in extraordinary circumstances. This is just a concession to the trade union bosses via stealth.

The high bar that this legislation will set, by the way, is done outside the Fair Work Act. And if the Fair Work Act is as strong as the government claims that it is, and subject to rigorous review as it claims it is continually doing, then why not make the adjustments within the scope of the Fair Work Act? Why bring in this separate piece of legislation?

Ultimately a government with no proper agenda is going to have this scattergun approach—a piece of legislation to satisfy a particular interest group and perhaps in so doing wedge the coalition and say that we do not support employee redundancies or some such nonsense. People will see through that when the time comes. We do absolutely recognise the need for economic prudence.

There is a likelihood that we will see more redundancies under this government. MYEFO predicts unemployment to increase further. Business confidence in this government is incredibly low. The carbon tax has increased the cost of doing business and those opposite have cut apprenticeship incentives for employers, further exacerbating pressure on small businesses and potentially decreasing opportunities for younger Australians to pursue a trade. What worse statement of confidence in the future of our economy could there be than saying we do not need as many apprenticeship incentives for young people entering the trades? That nasty message under the radar, under cover of MYEFO, I think should send a shockwave through the sector of the Australian economy that cares about youth unemployment. Every time the government talks about unemployment it never mentions youth unemployment, because it is a government that does not have its priorities right and has failed in this respect as in every other.

I conclude by reiterating the coalition's support for GEERS. We created GEERS but we will be moving amendments to this legislation to simply cap the entitlements that employees may receive in this particular set of circumstances at 16 weeks. The scheme from our point of view will not change. The excuse that the government is giving that somehow it needs to legislate GEERS because it is not real otherwise I think is nonsense. Who is in charge of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations if it is not the minister? Why can't the minister direct the secretary of the department, as he obviously has on every single other occasion when GEERS has been used? That is just a smokescreen. The real issue here is raising the bar for future union bosses' negotiations about workplace conditions that will put employers and the economy in an impossible position.

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