Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the fact that we get the opportunity to respond to this motion put forward that the government has a lacklustre record on productivity, economic growth and wages. Labor's approach to this is typical class warfare, effectively going after the big end of town, which somehow they see the coalition as being supportive of. The Labor Party has just finished contributing to the idea that, in the horticulture sector, there is worker and migrant exploitation. Two weeks ago, we had Kristina Keneally come down to hold a roundtable about worker exploitation in the Goulburn Valley. Two people turned up. Ultimately, when you have an area that actually has full employment—5.2 per cent in the Goulburn Valley is in fact full employment. Right around regional Victoria, there are job vacancies that outweigh the unemployed. This is not just a Goulburn Valley thing. This is not just a Bendigo thing. This exists throughout regional Victoria, where there are job vacancies that outweigh the unemployment rate. They may not be the jobs that people would like, but they are opportunities for employment.

The biggest problem we have in the Goulburn Valley in regional Victoria when it comes to horticulture, which happens to be a seasonal occupation, is obviously that there's going to be an area where we do have really high demands at certain times of the year and where we have very few Australians prepared to do the job. The opportunity to fill that labour with backpackers, seasonal worker programs or the range of other agricultural visas that we need is simply common sense. If you want to fight this, then you're going to be fighting Australian families. You're going to be fighting Australian businesses. The Labor Party is picking a war with these Australian families and Australian businesses.

When the migrants come out here, whether they be backpackers or seasonal workers, they're here for a short while, and they want to make as much money as they can. They want to pick fruit for not 38 hours a week. They want to work picking fruit and packing fruit for 50 or 60 hours. They get a casual rate, which is above the rate of a permanent worker. So they get a casual rate which has penalties built it into and easily the vast majority of them are happy to work at this casual rate for 50 hours. However, they are simply not allowed to work more than 38 hours unless they go on time-and-a-half or double-time.

So that is an absolute situation when you are trying to grow the economy in the regions. They are being held back by the Labor Party. The Labor Party's way of trying to fix this is simply to go to those Australian businesses and tax them more. If you look at what the Australian Labor Party currently have as a way of taking the economy forward, it is $38 billion worth of extra taxes a year than what we currently have. That $38 billion roughly works out to an extra $100 million worth of tax every day. So the Labor Party, if they had had the opportunity to be in government, would have taxed Australians $100 million extra yesterday. They'd be taxing Australians an extra $100 million today and another $100 million tomorrow. It wouldn't take long for $100 million in additional taxes every day to find its way to affect each and every Australians' pocket. This is not something that is going to affect somebody else. If Labor have this high-taxing, high-spending approach to somehow or other running government, running Australia as a nation and running the Australian nation as a business, this extra $100 million a day is going to be coming after you as an Australian. As a working Australian, you must always be aware that this $38 billion of additional taxes that the Labor Party are still trumpeting as the way to run this country is $100 million for each and every day of the calendar year. They'll be coming after you if they get the chance.

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