Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, we know what the member for Port Adelaide would offer the people of Australia if he ever became the energy minister of the Commonwealth: hiccups, you can bank on; confessions, you can bank on; a national electricity market modelled on that great experiment we're seeing underway in South Australia.

When I read the text of today's matter of public importance, I thought at first there might have been a spelling mistake in it. I thought they might have misspelled the name 'Queensland', or maybe the name 'Palaszczuk', and that what they actually wanted to talk about today was that Queensland Labor government—approaching a state election in a few weeks time or months time, possibly—failing to achieve anything at all in their three years in office. But, from listening to the opposition leader and those opposite, I have now come to the realisation that the opposition leader really wanted to set out his plan. I think 'parallel universe' was the phrase that I heard him use a couple of times in his speech—a parallel universe, where he wishes that all of those misleading lines he spouted were true, and where his Mediscare-type lines and his policy scares were somehow true.

No-one can put it better than the Prime Minister did just a few hours ago in this very place. He called out how crazy it is for this opposition to be moving this motion today—this motion about delivery of competent governance—at the same time as we've had such positive economic news. We've just had the numbers: 54,000 Australian jobs were created this month, 40,000 of them full-time. We are delivering when it comes to jobs and growth. I've got the numbers right here in front of me. Since the coalition government was elected in 2013, over 800,000 jobs have been created. Since Malcolm Turnbull became the Prime Minister of Australia, almost 500,000 jobs have been created. We've now seen 11 consecutive months of job creation. We've not seen a longer run of job creation in 23 years, and it shows the momentum that's currently building in Australia's labour market. Over the past six months, the first six months of this year, we've seen over a quarter of a million jobs created. That's the strongest six-month gain that we've seen in years and years—almost two decades. Eighty per cent of those jobs have been full time. We're seeing not only more jobs but also more Australians engaging in the labour market. So not only are we seeing the unemployment rate coming down; we're seeing the participation rate going up. In particular, I want to call out the female participation rate in Australia, which is now its highest on record. Today's numbers also show amazing figures for youth employment, because—while there's still a lot more to do, obviously—over the past six months, over 60,000 young Australians gained employment. That's the strongest gain in youth employment in this country since the GFC. These are amazing economic statistics that we're seeing. They are record numbers, and they're the sorts of numbers that we hope to see, as a result of our enterprise tax plan and our economic plan as we roll it out, in the better days ahead that we've been working so hard to achieve for all Australians. They're the sorts of results that we will continue to see as we further implement our economic plan.

In the 14 months since I was elected as part of this government as a new MP, we've delivered personal income tax cuts; we've delivered company tax cuts for small and medium businesses; we've delivered childcare reforms; we've unfrozen Labor's freeze on the Medicare rebate; and we've boosted schools funding and delivered the real Gonski. We've delivered massive free trade agreements that are unlocking huge potential for Australia in this region. Obviously, media reform today is just the latest example of this government getting on with the job and delivering. There's a litany—a long list—of other achievements there.

I did want to very quickly say that in Brisbane I'm working really hard to deliver on my election commitments as well. This week, constituents right around Brisbane will have received my first annual report, reporting on my work and my achievements in my first year of office. The people of Brisbane right now are seeing work happening on the Bruce Highway, on the M1, on the Inner City Bypass and on Kingsford Smith Drive. I had the Prime Minister in town late last year, when we delivered $10 million of extra funding to get the early planning work right for great future projects like the Cross River Rail and Brisbane's Metro project.

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