Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government that has got all the emotional characteristics of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Before the election we had the Prime Minister, then opposition leader, wandering around the country in fluoro. I remember him chucking ice around. I remember him gutting fish. I remember him visiting Ford in Geelong—all designed around jobs to give people reassurance.

What have they done in government? They have instituted policies that are cruel and calculated to divide the Australian community and the economy. They are calculated to entrench disadvantage and accelerate that disadvantage. Perhaps most concerning is that they are utterly, utterly cavalier about jobs. To that extent you need look no further than my electorate and the treatment that Holden got where we saw the Treasurer of this country chasing Holden out of the country.

I will give this to him: he endeavoured to repeat his record in the Howard government where they offered assistance to the car industry to make sure they stayed here, to make sure they employed here, to make sure they exported here. He had all of that rhetoric when he came down and visited Holden but he lost the cabinet battle and then we had a Treasurer who chased Holden out of the country.

From that, we are seeing a domino effect through car manufacturing to Toyota and the components sector, and what happens? Fifty thousand jobs. Not a job lost here or there; 50,000 jobs—more than 10,000 in South Australia—lost in areas that can least afford it.

After that performance you would think that they would be a bit reticent but, oh no, in this budget they cut a billion dollars out of the auto industry thus putting more pressure on the components industry. Anyone who knows the components industry knows that we are very, very close to seeing an early exodus of the car industry, because of the pressure this government has put on it.

What have they got as a panacea to address this employment issue? They have put in place a $155 million growth fund, which they bragged about, but when I asked the industry minister specific questions in consideration in detail just today, what kind of response did I get? Just a diatribe about the Labor Party. No specifics, no thought-out proposals, no projects, no skills based programs for redundant workers—none of that—just diatribe, just rhetoric.

We see that here. We see them wrapping this rubbish up in a ribbon as the member for Wollongong said—$2 billion worth of cuts in skills and apprenticeships, a billion dollars out of Tools For Your Trade, and what do we hear? 'Everything's good. Everything's fine. It'll all be right.' The government employ this unbelievable Orwellian language. They think that if they say it long enough and hard enough, they can defy reality.

What did we see in the budget? We saw a budget that smashed economic confidence, consumer confidence. You do not need to look too far. ABC on 21 May 2014, Michael Jander, their business editor—this was the headline: 'Consumer sentiments slump after federal budget announcement'. It drops 6.8 per cent to 92.9—that is solidly below the 100-point level where optimists equal pessimists; 60 per cent of families thought they would be worse off; and just 3.1 percent of people thought they would be better off. That is what they are doing for the retail industry. We have seen what they did for the manufacturing industry and then they are going to slam the retail industry—another big employer of the young.

To top it all off, we see what they are doing to young people: cutting them off the dole after six months and then expecting them to look for 40 jobs a months during that time when they are not receiving any income. We know what the outcome of that will be: further breaches, further time without income. That will leave many young people homeless, without income and without the capacity to get a job. So we have got this assault on jobs, assault on fairness, and this entrenchment of disadvantage and policies that are deliberately set out to make things worse. If those opposite think that they can get away with this anti-Labor rhetoric and nonsense they put out in this House, they have got another thing coming. These are very, very harsh measures that are designed to hurt Australia. (Time expired)

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