Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great MPI to talk on and it is a very important one, although I disagree slightly with one sentence in the MPI. I think the government does have a plan for jobs. Unfortunately, it is to destroy them. The member for Wakefield alluded to this earlier. If you look at the auto industry, before the election the industry said, 'If you cut assistance to our industry, we have to leave.' What did this government say? 'We know better. We're going to cut $500 million.' Then what happened? Holden leaves and takes Toyota with them. That is 50,000 direct jobs gone and another 200,000 indirect jobs under threat daily, because this government had a plan and that plan was to destroy jobs.

If you look at what they are doing in naval shipbuilding, they are kissing goodbye to 5,000 high-skilled, nation-building, defence shipbuilding jobs that are vital to our national security. If you look at SPC, one of the government's own MPs questioned the honesty of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—quite rightly. As we saw before the election there was not a worker in a high visibility vest that the PM could not get near fast enough. He loved them. Since the election I have not seen him at a factory, and I have not seen him have the courage to go to a factory. He has not been to Alcoa, he has not been to Holden, and he has not been to Toyota. He has not had the guts to visit any of them and say why his $500 million cut is ending their industry.

Let us look at what the government have done since the election. They have cut the $1 billion Aussie jobs plan that would have really helped to diversify the economy. The Prime Minister claims that he wants to be the infrastructure Prime Minister. Well, how about supporting the Australian Jobs Act which said that with every large project in this country you had to give Aussie companies and their workers a go first? It is now gone. If you look at the government's $2 billion of cuts to skills and training, that is gone. There are huge attacks on TAFE and huge attacks on Tools For Your Trade which are all gone. The response from the government member is typical of what their attitude is—when in doubt blame the jobseeker; when in doubt make it harder to get training, make it harder to get Newstart and blame them; when in doubt blame the workers. It is a classic response.

I have heard a few statistics quoted from the other side and I have a few as well. For example, since this government came to power the unemployment queue is longer by 23,000 people. That equates to 100 people a day being added to the unemployment queue. The previous speaker said that, under Labor, unemployment was the highest in over 15 years. Well, you have already broken that. There are 23,000 additional people on the unemployment queue. Even more worrying, there are nearly 17 million less hours of work per month in the market sector. So, those who are lucky enough to have a job are working less. That is a huge impact. Youth unemployment in the eight months the government have been in power in terms of statistical collection has gone from 12.7 per cent to 13.1 per cent, which is a very significant increase in such a short amount of time.

One area I want to touch was the government's great shield. People may remember that before the election they hid behind their little pamphlet 'Our plan—real solutions for all Australians'. Whenever Mr Abbott got a hard question he just said, 'Don't worry, I've got my pamphlet that provides all the answers.' There was also the six-point plan that some of their candidates in Western Sydney had a bit of trouble with. If I go to the employment section of the pamphlet, what is the one graph that they choose to highlight? What is the one graph that demonstrates how worried they are about unemployment? It is the long-term unemployed where they have a graph that shows the unemployment queue. What has happened since they have come to power? Since they have come to power long-term unemployment in this country has gone up by 20 per cent in eight short months, that is 30,000 more long-term unemployed people than before they were elected. It is so much that I have had to draw an extra symbol on the graph. It is so out of scale with the graph that they took to the Australian people. This shows that the government are all talk and no action.

This is an incredibly important topic. We are talking about the future of Australians. We are talking about the future of young people and trying to give them a chance to have gainful employment, where they can raise a family and contribute to Australian society. All we get from the other side is glib slogans, empty three-word slogans. Their actions are cutting $1 billion from the Australian jobs plan, cutting $2 billion from skills and training, cutting other forms of support, attacking child care and ripping away any support for Australian job seekers. All we get from them is blaming the job seekers—blaming the young people trying to find work in the member for Wakefield's electorate, the member for Gellibrand's electorate and my electorate of Charlton. When in doubt, they blame young people and they blame job seekers. It just demonstrates that they are not fit to govern this country.

See this speech in context