Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In recent speeches I have given an update to the House on what I think is one of our unplanned economic experiments: the comparison of employment growth between New South Wales and Victoria. They are two similar economies, and we are a federation, but unfortunately in Victoria we have a rather left-wing Labor government when compared to the Liberal government we have in New South Wales. So it is very interesting to compare the employment growth between those two states.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released only last month show there was a net 6,900 new jobs created in Victoria for the month of July, but in New South Wales the number was 29,600. So in the month of July we had four times more employment growth in New South Wales than we had in Victoria. In fact, if we go back to March, we see that since March 71,600 new jobs have been created in New South Wales, and 64,200 of those jobs are actually full-time. Guess how many net jobs in that equivalent time were created in the state of Victoria. Remember, there were 71,600 in New South Wales. I see there are some members from Victoria in the chamber. Can anyone guess how many were created in Victoria with their left-wing Labor government? If you said zero you would be close, but you would be wrong. It is actually less than zero. Since March, the employment in Victoria has gone backwards. They have lost jobs. But in New South Wales, with a Liberal government, 71,600 jobs have been created.

That is the difference between the Liberal policies and the Labor policies. We have seen this throughout our history. Whenever a Labor government have come to power they destroy jobs. We saw that during the previous coalition government in the Howard years. They put 353,000 people back into employment. They took those people off the employment queues. Under the six years of the rabble of the Labor government, we saw 278,000 people join the queues of the unemployed. With their renewable energy target and their plans to put inefficient renewable energy to 50 per cent, this will only destroy tens of thousands more jobs. The evidence is clear: if you want job creation, you elect Liberal governments.

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