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

I rise to speak in this debate after what can only be considered a very bizarre contribution. It was certainly different. I enjoyed the excursion into biology and I am glad to see someone on the government side supports Darwinian evolution. I do sometimes wonder about the science based credentials of the coalition government.

Leaving that aside, the main critique of the previous member was around the supposed change in composition of employment under the last government. Let's look at the absolute facts. The absolute facts are that under the last government nearly one million jobs were added to the economy during the period of the global financial crisis. Quite frankly, I do not care whether the jobs are created in micro businesses, small businesses, SMEs or big businesses. We just need to grow jobs in this country, and we have to put in place the policies that support job growth. So their argument is ridiculous, because it is about jobs growth. The last government added nearly one million jobs.

What we are facing now, by contrast, is a significant jobs crisis. We have 800,000 unemployed Australians. That is the highest number of unemployed Australians since 1994, which was after a significant recession. We have an unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent—the highest in more than 12 years. Even more worrying, we have 186,000 long-term unemployed Australians. That is the highest number ever, and the ratio of long-term unemployed to unemployed total is 25 per cent—the highest ratio ever recorded. We also have an underemployment rate of 8.5 per cent, which contrasts very badly with the peak of seven per cent in the 1990s recession. We have an under-utilisation rate of 14.7 per cent, which is also very worrying, and we have a youth unemployment rate of 13 per cent, with 20 per cent in the Hunter. Just imagine that for a minute: one in five young people in the Hunter Valley who are looking for work cannot find a job. We are risking a generation of lost young people. This is the issue we are facing. Last month we saw a decline in absolute hours worked of 432,000 hours. That is a very worrying trend when we are not in a recession. That is the job scenario we are facing when we are debating this issue of support for small business.

I support small business. My colleague, the member for Rankin, is passionate about supporting small business—absolutely passionate about it—but let us not forget the context of this debate. The context of this debate is a jobs crisis and a small business package that comes on top of a gutting of industry and innovation policy—an absolute gutting. We have seen $2 billion cut out of innovation and industry policy by this government. We have seen a $500 million precincts program cut that would have grown innovative small businesses working with applied researchers. Most egregiously, we have seen a cut to the $300 million venture capital fund. I cannot think of many better ways of supporting innovative small businesses than by helping them access venture capital in the Australian market, which is quite immature. We have seen a $2 billion cut in industry and innovation policy. We have also seen a $1 billion cut in training and skills formation funding by this government. They might have this small business package over there that everyone welcomes, but there is a sleight of hand—there is a pea and thimble trick—where over here they have cut $2 billion from industry and innovation policy and a billion dollars from training and skills.

What is the end result of this? We have seen the annihilation of the automotive industry—50,000 direct jobs gone and another 200,000 indirect jobs on the chopping block. We have seen the defence industry decimated. I look forward to the member for Hindmarsh's contribution—he has been missing in action—on the decline of the South Australian industry. It takes more than just nodding your head behind Prime Minister Abbott. It takes more than being a head nodder to deliver for your state, and he has failed to deliver for South Australia, just as this government has failed to deliver for all Australians. I welcome support for small business. I welcome anything that grows Australian businesses, but let us set it in the context of a jobs crisis, a long-term unemployment crisis, an under-utilisation crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and the gutting of industry and innovation programs and training programs. Let us support small business, but let us not do that at the expense of supporting every other business in this country.

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