Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

They have lots to say as interjections but that adds nothing in terms of some sort of alternative plan. They damaged the economy. They hurt and harmed businesses. They hard-wired in economic challenges and budget burns with no plan to meet them. They have damaged every respect of good governance. They have no credibility at all to speak about the performance of this government, because they left such a mess and we are getting on with the job of fixing it.

They have spent the last 10 months or so defending a carbon tax. They have consistently voted to keep it, to hit and harm Australian households and small businesses. They do not build our capacity to compete and win new economic opportunities made possible by free trade agreements—no, they want to nobble our capacity to take advantage of those agreements and then bag the agreements as well. I recount in this place that the now opposition leader when he was the tsar of the Australian Workers Union seconded a motion at the Labor state conference—I think in 2004—opposing a free trade agreement with China before negotiations had even started. Before those negotiations even started he was against any kind of agreement with China that would open up jobs and trading opportunities. So let us have none of this nonsense from Labor that there are deficiencies in the deal. They do not want any deal at all. Why don't they want any deal at all? Because that is what the unions demand of them.

It is interesting to see where the strength in the union movement is. The unions are most dominant in the areas of the economy that are not trade exposed. That is where they are bullying, pushing around, huffing, puffing, blustering and demanding good things for the unions even if they harm the economy. They think it does not matter because all it does is push up costs and damage opportunities for others.

Do you see much union activity in the traded sector of the economy? No, you do not. This is why you see this inherent hostility to trade opportunities, to opening the door to hundreds of millions of new prospective customers—the very markets that enable our agile and enterprising businesses to delight those customers and grow the economy and the jobs that flow from them. That is what we are trying to do. Labor cannot even face up to its ambition to make it harder for Australian businesses to win the contest of modern economies—that is, new markets that are not reserved for us. This is what Labor does not seem to understand. Yes, we are an increasingly global marketplace. These trade agreements give us an advantage to make the most out of those trade opportunities to create new customers, new value, new jobs and new growth opportunities.

What does Labor want to do? Nobble our potential to meet that—load up the burdens of carbon taxes and keep the red tape festival they presided over so we lose the agility and the capacity to win those markets. Newsflash for Labor: there is a world of delicious opportunities out there but they are not reserved for us. We need to win them; we need to work to secure them and get the economic benefits that flow from them. That is off the back of the price that all of our citizens in our nation are paying for six years of Labor incompetence. We are still paying $1 billion a month to service Labor's debt. We borrowed $100 million today because of the budget settings hard-wired by an incompetent and economically illiterate Labor Party that has learnt nothing over the journey.

While we repair the budget so we live within our means, while we deal with changes in the economy, from the mining sector to the non-mining sector, while we address the demography that is having an impact on our future opportunities, while we work hard to boost productivity, entrepreneurship and private endeavour—all of the things we need to grow the incomes for the future and to underwrite the great promise of our country that the next generation will have it better than us—what do we get from Labor? Obstruction. No ideas. No capacity to engage in a constructive way. Just thinking that life is about a Labor Party branch meeting.

As long as they keep talking the talk that they like hearing amongst themselves, ignoring—is it one in eight members of our economy who are members of a union?—the interests of the rest of the economy, ignoring the opportunities we want to provide to those people looking for jobs, for new markets and for new ways to grow the economy, we have that plan and we have been implementing that plan. It is to repair the budget and it is to remove the obstacles to economic and jobs growth. You can see the results, which are extremely strong and positive. They build a great foundation for the next phase of clear-sighted and clear-minded coalition policy.

The economy is now $68 billion larger than when we inherited it from Labor. There are over 300,000 living, breathing Australians who have jobs now compared with under Labor. There are more women in the workforce than ever before and more women creating the new enterprises for the future than ever before. These are deserving of celebration. They are positive momentum. They are about opportunities and the results of a clear plan. Jobs growth in the Australian economy has been 10 times the jobs growth that we inherited from Labor. Our jobs growth makes look pale the jobs opportunity in other economies, like the US, the UK and Canada. In fact, our jobs growth over the past year has been stronger than any G7 nation around the world. If only there were a job for every bit of interjection from Labor members—there would be no unemployment, because they would just keep gobbing off without putting forward any alternative plan.

We see that job advertisements are up. That is a good sign for the future. Retail sales are up. Exports are up. For residential-building construction—for those Labor members who do not realise—for the subcontractors, the self-employed, who are at the heart of the one million construction employees, this is good news. We have building construction. That is houses being built at a 23 per cent higher rate than at the last election. Personal bankruptcies and the challenging economic insecurity that creates are at a 20-year low. We are seeing investment in the services sector.

Ms Butler interjecting—

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