Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This gives me great pleasure. I thank the member for Macarthur for moving this motion because it gives us an opportunity to advocate for a strong economic growth agenda as the most effective means to address unemployment. The coalition wants job growth because, in the end, job growth provides the opportunities for Australians to stand on their own two feet, to be independent in their own financial affairs and to be able to help support themselves as well as their family. But one of the most important things about people standing on their own two feet is not just that they are able to help themselves up but that they are also able to help others.

More importantly, we want strong job growth as Liberals because we want taxpayers. We want people to share the burden of managing the cost of our society so that we can help people who are most vulnerable—to be able to assist those people who are not in a position to change their circumstances, such as people with a disability or pensioners, or to be able to underwrite and support the important health services that people need across the country. That is why we believe in job growth. That is why we stand for liberalism and everything else that we believe in. That is why we are achieving it under the Turnbull government. The role of government is to create the environment for economic freedom so people can go on in enterprises, invest and offer opportunities to Australian jobseekers.

The reform era of the past 30 years has enabled unbroken economic expansion, and that is an exciting thing. It has enabled the opportunity to create jobs for the 21st century so capital can be directed to opportunities to create jobs for the people who need them and so we can always stay ahead of the pack—rather than the reactionary mindlessness of protectionism, which has previously existed in this country and is being dismantled, where we saw shipping, telecommunication and airline industries which were deregulated and enterprise bargaining superseding centralised wage fixing. The tax system has also been modernised.

What that has allowed is business and enterprise to move capital to invest into the future, and that is what we should want. As a result, only a dozen economies are bigger than Australia's and only one country has reached our per capita wealth. We must continue this economic progress, advocate for economic openness and remain firm against the growing antiglobalisation sentiment which, frankly, we are starting to see from the other side as they seek to replicate Donald Trump's sentiments because they think it will give them some sort of political leg-up—something that I am very concerned about. The justification for economic rationalism is to protect or, to quote, 'save local jobs', but history shows it does exactly the reverse. When are they going to learn the lessons of history? Protectionism will do little more than entrench unemployment in Australia, favour those who have invested in the past, and support and protect their industries at the expense of exactly the same people that Labor claim they want to get jobs for.

The difference between us and them is that they are interested in protecting the interests of those people who are members of unions; we are interested in creating the opportunities for people who do not have jobs. The quality and quantity of the jobs in the future rely on access to overseas markets, allowing us to export our competitive services alongside our natural resources and value-added manufacturing. That is right—the economy is built from the bottom up; it is not just delivered by some government bureaucrat in Canberra. We are about community control, not about Canberra control.

See this speech in context