Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science) Share this | Hansard source

Employing more Australians, as the member for Boothby knows in her electorate.

Then you have the ABCC—the Australian Building and Construction Commission—and the registered organisation and corrupting benefits legislation, making sure that the rule of law is in Australian workplaces and that unions operate with the same responsibility as company directors have and that, if payments are made to union officials, there is vision and transparency. Why? Because members pay their fees in good faith. They expect that their union leadership is representing them in good faith. If there are payments being received and they don't know about them, and they are going to outside organisations like GetUp! that are then campaigning against coalmines and coal workers' jobs, I don't think that is in good faith.

What are the Turnbull government doing for small business? There are tax cuts, as I've mentioned, and the instant asset write-off. We're working on competition reform. Again, those opposite are not in favour of competition reform. Why? Because it doesn't suit big business. And what's the relationship? It's big business and big unions in bed together, robbing low-paid workers. They do it through EBAs, and they're trying to do it through competition reform.

We've lifted Labor's frozen Medicare rebate.

There is defence spending reform—again, a favourite budget item of those opposite through the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. They cut it by 10 per cent, or $5.5 billion. It got to the lowest amount since 1938. We had not one ship built in the six years on their watch. We have announced a massive rollout, $200 billion worth, and there will be jobs galore in states like South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, as the supply chains that we need through the procurement lever that we use in government are backfilled, engaging with businesses from SMEs to large businesses. Primes are motivated to engage with Australian SMEs. Why? Again, it's because of profitability increases. Growth comes, and then more jobs.

There is $75 billion, as announced in the budget, on infrastructure spending; the country needs it.

There are child care reforms starting next July. There is education reform, with Gonski 2.0. Again, you heard it in question time: there were 27 different agreements in the lead-up to the last election, with Labor running around the country offering different people different deals. Why? So they could have a political win. There was no structure, no thought in it, other than political expediency. That has been cleaned up by the minister for education.

Those opposite came up with the idea—their idea; I give them full credit for it—of the NDIS, and there was bipartisan support. It is hard to budget what these things will cost in the longer term. These things grow. Forecasts are more inaccurate the longer they go. There have been funding shortfalls that have come on our watch. But, in our commitment to that initiative, we have found ways that we can fix those funding shortfalls.

Just today, the Turnbull government delivered the latest addition to No Jab, No Pay—there are 210,000 kids in stage 1 of this—to insist that parents vaccinate their kids for the safety of their children and the other children that they interact with, be it at child care or at school.

Media reforms were announced, passing late last night—long-needed reforms of laws that came into effect before there was the internet, and here they are.

What do you get at the end of all that? You get the economic statistics that the Treasurer announced today. You are talking about 800,000 jobs that have been created in the last five years—250,000 in the last 12 months. You are talking about 11 months of continuous job growth. And, of those 250,000 jobs, 80 per cent are full-time, arresting the trend that has unfolded historically, driven through the GFC, of the casualisation and underemployment problem in this country. You've got—

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