Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Macarthur for raising the important issue of the Australian unemployment rate, which is having a detrimental impact on communities across Brand, the electorate which I represent in Western Australia. It is a most timely to raise this motion because only last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that Western Australia has the highest rate of unemployment in the country. It is quite a record for Liberal Premier Colin Barnett to have presided over. While Australia's national unemployment rate is 5.6 per cent, WA is dealing with an unemployment rate of 6.5 per cent. In fact, just this morning Rio Tinto, the mining giant, has confirmed it is cutting more jobs across its iron ore division in WA. It looks like 500 more jobs will be lost, and that is in addition to the 170 jobs Rio Tinto cut in its Pilbara operations in March.

This WA unemployment rate may shock some people in the eastern states who consider WA a rich mining state, but it did not shock or surprise us members from the west who are seeing the impact of a faltering economy and the end of the construction boom which has enabled great mineral exports. I must add that the end of this construction boom in WA was utterly foreseeable. There has been a failure on behalf of the Barnett, Abbott and Turnbull Liberal governments to look ahead and plan for how governments could help build Australian jobs through the initiation of nation-building infrastructure projects, which only governments can get off the ground, despite what others might think.

We are seeing in our electorates the impact that rising unemployment is having on local families, local youth and local businesses. We are seeing the impact that underemployment is having on communities. Although people are in work they are not receiving enough shifts or hours to pay the bills or to put food on the table. There is just not enough work to go around. The people in Brand want meaningful jobs. They want to be able to access training that leads to real employment opportunities. They want their children who are finishing school to have a better future to look forward to than the one currently on offer.

The youth unemployment rate in Brand is more than double the national average at 13.6 per cent. That is an absolute shame. What is also an absolute shame is the government's failure to address this stagnation in the labour market and its failure to grow full-time employment opportunities. I see the costs regularly that this is having on people, on communities and on the economy. It is leaving vast numbers of people with little hope of gaining employment because the jobs just do not exist at the moment and there is little hope of them emerging in the future.

Without sound investment and without strong government leadership and vision—again, for large infrastructure projects—these jobs will not exist for some time to come. Our young people deserve better than this. Our young people are still applying themselves to be the best they can be and they deserve to be able to find a job to start their working lives. Nowhere was this application more visible than on Friday in Orelia where I had the good fortune to be at the opening of the Peron Trade Training Centre located at Gilmore College in Kwinana. This process and plant engineering centre is a very special initiative that is supported by local industry. Here students will gain invaluable experiences through the vocational education and training in many aspects of the oil, gas and chemical engineering industries.

It was also an initiative of my predecessor. The Hon. Gary Gray AO was instrumental in setting it up. Gary pushed hard for this facility to be built at Gilmore College in Kwinana because he saw how important it was to give local students the skills that they need for the workforce. The facility allows local students to believe in themselves. It shows them that they have the right to first-class training opportunities and with that the right to work. It must be said that these training opportunities and facilities have been denied to this area for many years. The proud students and the families at the college who I spoke to are optimistic of a bright future. We need to provide them with employment opportunities in order for them to avail themselves of that right to work and to realise their optimism.

Gilmore College is only minutes from the Kwinana industrial strip, an area which delivers billions of dollars to the WA state economy. It has historically employed many people from the local area. It could also be home to a new outer harbour. This would be a long-term, nation-building project that would create much-needed jobs and economic opportunities for the people living in local communities, for WA and for the country. The government is failing to consider the need for this project and its importance to WA and the nation. It is failing to invest in a project that is estimated will create 25,000 new direct jobs and will help grow local, state and national economies. The government is instead pursuing an outdated road toll and freeway project that will smash through the suburbs and wetlands of Fremantle. In an unbelievable piece of shocking planning the Perth Freight Link will end two kilometres short of the freight destination of the port of Fremantle. It truly beggars belief.

The Kwinana outer harbour project goes beyond providing employment during its planning and construction phase and will provide trade, industrial and business development opportunities for decades to come, which of course will lead to significant employment opportunities in the future and the future of young people of Kwinana and Brand. I urge this government and the Barnett government to have a go at looking at the future.

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