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

I was somewhat disappointed by the contributions of the members for Scullin and Wills, although the member for Wills actually got on track towards the end when he discussed education and research. Let us look at research and health research. The medical health research fund is a ground-breaking $20 billion initiative. I am sure that the member for Wills would agree that that is where this country needs to go, but did he mention it? No. There was not iota of it in his speech. I was recently at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute for a visit. They have around 150 highly educated postgraduate employees among their 400 employees. That is because of federal government money—only $200 million of it. Member for Wills, imagine what $20 billion could do! In case he was not listening during question time, the head of Universities Australia, Belinda Robertson, said in the Financial Review this week:

It is simply not possible to maintain the standards that students expect or the international reputation that Australia's university system enjoys without full fee deregulation.

That is right. The body for universities across Australia endorses full fee deregulation to make our universities better and give them a fighting chance against the competition from overseas.

We heard no new ideas raised and no solutions proposed by the opposition, but that is nothing new. We have been through that before and hear it every week in the House. We are after solutions, especially for my state of South Australia, where youth unemployment is around 40 per cent. The carbon tax has not helped at all. It has not helped jobs but it has increased the cost of living. Qantas had a $100 million bill and Virgin had a $20 million bill. Earlier this week I was talking to a major employer. They said they had a $20 million bill from the carbon tax. Imagine how many employees we can add to the payroll of major employers and small businesses with the removal of the carbon tax. We are on the right track. The bills are going down and are looking better. Since the carbon tax has been removed electricity prices in my state have fallen by about nine per cent and gas prices have fallen by about five per cent. That is not inconsequential. It helps small businesses. It helps medium sized businesses. It helps households and consumers. What do Labor want to do? We know their position. They want to bring it back—higher taxes, higher costs.

What else have we done? Let us touch on the free trade agreements that we have signed over the last year following some great work by the Minister for Trade, Andrew Robb. We have signed one with Korea and one with Japan. The South Korea free trade agreement equates to $5 billion in additional income. It means more jobs and more capital investment. Around 15,000 jobs are expected to be created from the Korean free trade agreement after years of operation. When one in five jobs in Australia is linked to trade this is a significant step forward. Local exporters, small businesses, want to reach out to the growing Asian middle class, and the growth in Asia is so important.

Let us have a look at our record on jobs. Over the last year we have created jobs at three times the rate that the Labor Party did in their last year in government—that is over 100,000 jobs. That is a great result. What were Labor doing in their last year? We know that they were changing Prime Ministers from Gillard to Rudd and changing small-business ministers as well. We are reading in the papers each week, with the release of each new book, about their infighting and instability. No wonder they were unable to govern the country properly when they were fighting among themselves, working out who was backing whom, who was jostling for which position and which promotion. If they had got on with the job of governing Australia we would be in a far better place than we are now. As usual, we need to fix up their mess.

I will finish on a couple of other positive initiatives. In my state, South Australia, and in Victoria we have the $155 million innovation growth fund and we have the infrastructure for South Road. Defence has been a topic for today: we are committing to almost $1 billion worth of defence procurement in South Australia in this year alone. There are 44 separate acquisition projects. There is $34 million in funding for the future submarine project—it is high-end work. We have close to $80 million for the future frigates. That is a significant commitment. We are committed to jobs. We are committed to a strong ship-building industry. We are going in the right direction on a number of items. We got rid of the mining tax. We are producing the jobs of the future. We are doing a far better jobs than our friends on the other side of the chamber.

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