Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this rather Orwellian named bill: the Australian Jobs Bill 2013. I would like to comment on a few of the statements made by the member for Kingston—that this government is somehow supporting the Australian manufacturing. This government, that the member for Kingston is a member of, supports smashing Australian industry with the world's largest carbon tax. The member for Kingston cannot come into this parliament, stand at the dispatch box and claim the wonderful things her government is doing to support manufacturing while at the same time belting them with the world's largest carbon tax.

On the Australian Jobs Bill, the member for Kingston also mentioned all the wonderful jobs that this Labor government has created. Firstly, governments do not create jobs; it is the private sector entrepreneurs who create jobs in our economy. Also, if we have a close look at the ABS statistics for jobs, there are currently, as at April 2013, 682,900 Australians on the unemployment lines. An extra 211,000 people have been added to the unemployment lines since this government came to office, an increase of 45 per cent. We can fill two Melbourne Cricket Grounds or two Sydney Football Stadiums and still have people left over. That is the number of people who have been added to the unemployment lines of this country since this Labor government took office.

We hear that this government has created close to 900,000 jobs—it is actually 885,000. Again, these jobs were not created by government unless they were blow-outs in public servants; they were created by the private sector. What is not said is that, in the time this government has been in office, we have seen our Australian population increase by 1,858,000—close to two million people more live in Australia now than when this government came to office. If the government were doing a good job, we would expect to see 65 per cent or more of those people being employed. Let me go through those numbers again. Some 1.85 million people have been added to the Australian population but we have had an increase in employment of only 885,000. That is less than 50 per cent. We are going backwards as fast as we can.

Of course, those are the official ABS statistics. We also have the Roy Morgan figures. They do a slightly different measure of unemployment. For March 2013 Roy Morgan estimated there were 1.37 million Australians unemployed, or 10.8 per cent of the workforce, and a further 936,000 Australians underemployed. We know the definition of 'employed' counts those who have worked for one hour a week. So we should add the number of people underemployed—that is, people working part time and looking for more work. According to the Roy Morgan figures, there are an additional 936,000 people underemployed. Roy Morgan notes:

… what should concern the Government is that a large 2.305 million Australians (18.2% of the workforce) were unemployed or under-employed in March …

So we really do have to look at what we can do to ensure we see the growth and protection of Australian jobs, but this bill does not do it.

This bill bizarrely creates Australian industry opportunity officers. These bureaucrats will be embedded into private companies to second-guess their purchasing decisions. This is something you would expect of a mad socialist plan. This is something we saw in old Soviet Russia, where the government would appoint a bureaucrat to second-guess a private company's decision. We can just see the government thinking this up. They dreamed: 'If only we can get a government bureaucrat in every business. The government knows best. We can plan exactly the way it will work.' This is simply a mad decision. It creates red tape. It does the exact opposite of what businesses need to create jobs in our society and our economy.

Let us look at a few comments. Minerals Council of Australia Chief Executive, Mitch Hooke, said this proposal was simply unnecessary. He said:

The proposal to embed public servants inside companies is both unnecessary, unwarranted and inefficient.

Australian mining companies use more than 80 per cent local goods and services.

We are already buying Australian when it makes good business sense to do so.

If we are going to make sure that Australian companies buy Australian goods, we do not need new bureaucracy, we do not need government bureaucrats meddling in private businesses; what we need is to reduce business red tape and get their taxes down, especially their carbon tax. Some Australian businesses are becoming uncompetitive simply because this government has hit them with the world's largest carbon tax. When an Australian company is quoting to provide goods and services to a large new project and it is competing with someone from overseas, the Australian business employing Australian workers is penalised by this government in having to pay the carbon tax but the overseas company simply does not pay it. We have a government placing our own businesses here in Australia at a competitive disadvantage. You guys just do not get it. You do not understand or realise the damage that you are doing.

But of course, this gets worse. We know that at 1 July this year the carbon tax will increase. Elsewhere around the world we have seen a collapse in the EU carbon price and we have seen energy prices in the US fall, and we in Australia are putting our carbon tax up. This is complete insanity. This is going to cost Australian jobs, like we have been seeing over the past weeks and months.

Let us not forget the Treasurer's promise from last budget that the economy would create 500,000 new jobs this financial year. There are only two months left. So far there have only been 123,000 jobs created in the economy despite the population increasing by over 600,000 people. So with two months left, the Treasurer is 75 per cent short of that target. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to work out why. It is simply because the same government, the same Treasurer, has put Australian industry at a competitive disadvantage with the carbon tax. So is it any wonder we have this big increase in our population but only a very small increase in our employment numbers?

And as I said, the carbon tax does get worse. We know that it goes up. Not only that, what we do have and what there has not been any commentary in the media about, is that this government plans to extend the carbon tax to our trucking industry from 1 July 2014. This would effectively increase the tax on diesel fuel by 7c a litre. And that is just in 2014. So every time every small business truck owner goes out there to fill his truck to deliver goods anywhere in Australia, starting in 2014 if this government is re-elected, they are going to be paying an extra 7c a litre for their diesel fuel. Again, this policy is complete insanity. It is the exact opposite of sanity and it will kill jobs.

Take a few examples. If an Australian business is manufacturing in Melbourne and has to shift goods by road to Northern Queensland, they will pay the increase in the carbon tax through diesel fuel. Similarly, a business in Western Sydney in my electorate of Hughes might be manufacturing or quoting for a job for a mining project in Perth. Those goods must be transported across Australia, again incurring the increase in the carbon tax on diesel fuel.

But if I am a manufacturer overseas, I can ship my goods into the Port of Perth or the Port of Brisbane or the Port of Melbourne, reducing the road transport cost and the distance in Australia, thereby avoiding the tax. Again, it is the carbon tax and these other taxes that are putting Australian industry at a competitive disadvantage and costing Australian jobs.

We have seen some bad bills come from this government, but the ideology behind this bill that wants to put a government bureaucrat into private businesses to second-guess their purchasing decisions just shows that this government has completely lost the plot. They have no idea and they are unfit for office. That is why the coalition opposes this bill. If the coalition is successful at the next election, we will deliver tax cuts without a carbon tax. We will take the pressure off business. We will try to ensure that Australian business can compete on a level playing field. That is what will create Australian jobs. That is what creates the incentive for people to employ. This is just another bad bill from a bad government in its dying days. Therefore the coalition has no alternative than to oppose this bill.

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