Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to support this discussion of a matter of public importance which talks about this government's lacklustre ability to increase productivity, the backwardness of our economic growth and the lowest wages on record and lowest wage growth in the history of this nation. It's not a surprise this is happening when you see a government that basically doesn't want to get involved, when you see a government that sees the figures that come out every quarter and just sits back and says: 'Nothing to see here. This is all rosy. We're doing well.' It's looking at the next political fix rather than the reality of ensuring that we have economic growth, good productivity and the creation of jobs, which would then flow on to everything else that we do in this nation—our education, our health system, people being able to pay their bills et cetera.

It's no surprise, when you look at our productivity and how it's going backwards, that under this government's watch in the six to seven years that it's been in government we've seen the automobile industry absolutely diminished in this nation. It has disappeared off the face of Australia. We lost real jobs in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Approximately 100,000 people involved in that industry have had their jobs wiped out. So it's not rocket science that productivity's gone backwards.

That's unlike when we, Labor, were in government, where we faced the largest and most difficult period of our economic history during the global financial crisis, where we put levers in place and where we actually took action and put a plan in place to ensure that we got out of it, created some jobs and continued to go forwards instead of backwards. In fact, we were one of the only nations in the world that went forwards instead of backwards. That's because we put a plan in place and we cared about the individual Australians who would have lose their jobs if we did what the then opposition was saying—'Sit back and do nothing and it will all work out.' That is exactly what this government is doing right now.

We know that without productivity there is a downfall in every other area across the board. Whether it be health, whether it be education, whether it be low wages, all these have a negative effect when productivity isn't going in the right direction. We know that with low wages, for example, when the economy isn't doing too well, if you give a little bit of an increase to the workers that money goes straight back into the economy. That's because there is a need to pay the mortgage, there's a need to pay for electricity, there's a need to perhaps buy some whitegoods or there is a need to buy those little extras that people normally cannot afford because of their low wages. So, the moment you give that little bit extra it goes straight back into the economy, assisting the economy to tick and move around. That is what this government is not doing. They're wiping their hands of it. They're saying, 'There's nothing to see here,' and constantly playing politics and telling us how great they are and how many jobs they have created. Yes, they've created a few jobs, but all part-time, at the expense of full-time jobs—real jobs with a real wage and real wage growth. We've gone backwards by creating thousands of part-time jobs in which people, as we heard the member for Bendigo say, are having to pick up three part-time jobs to be able to keep food on the table, pay their rent, get their kids to school and pay for their health care needs. It's unacceptable to see a First World nation like Australia go backwards after having been a leader and having grown continuously over the last 20 years by an average of two per cent in this area. We are going backwards and we still haven't seen a plan from the government or anything being put in action that focuses on this very important issue, which affects people's lives. It affects workers' lives. It affects the ability to pay their bills, to send their kids to school and to buy products, which helps the economy. It is a shame that today we have a government that shrugs its shoulders and looks over the chamber to blame Labor for when they were in government, even though they been in government for seven-odd years and have done nothing about this issue.

There are things that can be put in place. There are levers that they can pull, but they're not doing it. They're sitting back and hoping it will tick along and turn around. Well, it ain't going to turn around. Unless we get wage growth it's not going to turn around. We need wage growth and that extra money going into the pockets of workers so that they can go out and spend that money, which will help the economy. It's not rocket science. It's pretty straightforward. But when we talk about wage growth the government constantly says, 'There is nothing for us to do here; it's an economy and it works on its own.' Well, it doesn't. That's why you're in government—to actually put things in place to turn things around. It's a shame— (Time expired)

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