Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The hypocrisy of members opposite on this MPI today is absolutely breathtaking. This is the crowd under which, in six years, one in 10 manufacturing jobs in Australia was lost—one in 10 across the entire country. These are the people on whose watch the unemployment rolls increased by 200,000 people. That is 200,000 people more unemployed and one in 10 manufacturing jobs lost—all in the space of a very, very unpleasant six years. That is the record that we are confronted with. To see their confected outrage and purported affinity for workers, given that record, is really quite outrageous.

The government has a very clear plan for jobs. There are many elements to it. One of them is to get rid of the huge amounts of red tape that the previous government put in place in their six sorry years of stewardship of the country. We will be getting rid of more than 8,000 regulations shortly. We have also put in place important environmental approvals for more than $400 billion worth of projects. That is critical. The last thing you want is big projects tied up in lengthy and opaque approval processes. What you want is jobs in infrastructure. That is what this government is committed to. We will also help to generate jobs through reinstituting the ABCC, to help the very troubled construction industry. It is really very important to identify all of the issues that we are seeing in that industry.

The government's plans in relation to Qantas are absolutely what Qantas and the broader aviation industry needs. What Qantas needs is the ability to stand on its own two feet and to fight in the marketplace like every other company does. The fact is that Virgin and other airlines today have an advantage over Qantas. That advantage is that they can source foreign capital in a way that Qantas cannot. What that means is that Qantas is shackled and it is more difficult for Qantas to invest for growth. In any business, whether it is aviation or the media industry—regardless of what it is—no business wants to be in a position where it is competing in an unfair manner against its competitors. All anybody asks of government is the capacity to show up, do their best work and succeed in the marketplace. That is what Qantas should be allowed to do. We have seen 9,000 new jobs generated by Virgin in the past decade or so as a result of competition in the aviation industry. That is a good thing. That demonstrates that, when you enable companies to compete, to put forward products to consumers and to take some risk and grow, you generate economic activity. You do not generate economic activity by placing a government diktat from on high on the marketplace; you generate jobs by creating a level and fair playing field and enabling businesses to get on and do what they do best, which is to invest in the future of the nation.

Better Labor Parties in previous decades have understood the need to make sometimes difficult decisions. They have understood the need for reform. The Keating and Hawke governments made some decisions which were, as the Prime Minister said today, difficult at the time but certainly right for the long-term future of the nation. They had the guts to walk away from cheap populism. They knew that Australia's future demanded more than an easy headline and a simple sound bite, that it actually required the policy framework to allow our economy to grow.

Unfortunately, the current opposition bears very little resemblance to those previous Labor governments. When we see an opportunity for structural reform, they see an opportunity simply for a cheap headline. When you are dealing with a matter as important as the future of the Australian aviation industry, it is absolutely critical not to play politics with it but to do the right thing by the aviation industry and Qantas. Get rid of the carbon tax and get the playing field level; that is how you generate jobs.

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