Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker, Assistant Trade and Investment Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to respond on behalf of the government to the matter of public importance brought on by the member for Gorton today. I would like to put on record at the start some of the actual facts in this debate that are pertinent. Jobs growth of 2.5 per cent throughout the year is stronger than any G7 economy, is more than double the OECD average of 0.9 per cent and compares to 0.07 per cent when the government came to office. A record number of Australians are in work and the participation rate has never been higher with nearly 1.5 million jobs having been created since we came to office.

The member for Gorton mentioned looking after their mates. I'll tell a little story that I heard somewhere around Easter time leading up to the federal election. I was talking to a mate of mine who is a plant operator on the local council. By his own words, he is not a wealthy man but he is a working man and has been a union member all his life. He expressed to me his concerns of having a Labor government running the country after the election in May. He said to me: 'I'm a working man and I've got two things to look after myself in my retirement. I have a second house in town. It didn't cost me a lot of money but it is negatively geared and that's going to help fund my retirement and my kids want the same opportunity. They're working FIFO—fly in, fly out—in the mines in the west of the state and they would like the same opportunity.' The other thing he said was, 'The only other thing I will have besides the pension is my superannuation and I don't want anyone to touch that.'

If the Labor Party want to look at who is looking after who, they might want to have a close look at their traditional mates and find out that they are no longer behind them because Labor no longer have the policies to support working Australians. We on this side have recorded three years of consecutive monthly jobs growth, the first time on record, with 310,000 jobs created in the last 12 months. The Treasury secretary at Senate estimates only a couple of days ago said we're seeing strong labour market outcomes, and employment growth of 2.5 per cent is strong. When we came to office, unemployment was 5.7 per cent and rising compared to the 5.2 per cent today. Under Labor, an additional 230,000 people were unemployed after six years of them being in government.

Female workforce participation is at record highs, while the gender pay gap is at a record low of 14 per cent, which is $1,100 per year lower than when we came into government, so that is a significant improvement. The proportion of those of working age on welfare is now at the lowest level in 30 years. It is also important to understand that the minimum-wage earners have benefited under this government, with the latest minimum wage increase at three per cent, which is well above the rate of inflation.

I also wear the hat of minister for decentralisation. As someone who represents a large regional area, an electorate that is half of New South Wales, I want to touch on the opportunities that the coalition are providing for people in regional areas. The massive $100 billion infrastructure spend across the country, not only in regional areas but in the cities as well, is giving an enormous boost into employment and opportunities right across Australia. The Inland Rail project is coming through my electorate at the moment. I was only speaking to a farmer this morning who is actually working on that project with a gravel truck, earning income in this particularly difficult time of drought.

I've got to admit the drought is severe. We have never experienced a level of dryness and drought like we've seen over the last three or four years. But, despite that, unemployment levels in regional Australia are quite low. Indeed, before the drought, unemployment in Dubbo was 2.2 per cent and across my entire electorate, which has some very small western towns, it was under four per cent. One of the challenges we, as a government, have is to highlight the opportunities and the employment possibilities outside the cities. I know some of the members opposite are regional but many of them focus on what's happening in the cities, but the truth of the matter is that there are opportunities for employment even now with the drought. We are having an enormous skills shortage across regional Australia. There are opportunities in health care, aged care, trades as well as in the mining sector. In my area of the Orana region around Dubbo, we've actually just started a DAMA to open opportunities for people with aptitude, skills and a desire to do well to move to a regional area to set up home, establish their family and add to a regional community.

It's also important that we look after our own. I'm particularly proud of the regional apprenticeship program that was announced in the budget, which is encouraging, through financial support, apprentices and employers to look after our young people. It's all very well to bring people from elsewhere, but we've also got to make sure that our young people have a start. The regional apprenticeship program, supported by Clontarf, has seen, right across Australia, particularly in my part of Australia, young Aboriginal men staying at school, going into traineeships and going into employment. That's the future of this country—looking after our local young people and getting them into employment.

While we might have debates in this place on a broader scale, it's important that we actually knuckle down and do things that make a difference. Right across regional Australia we are seeing the work that's been going through. In my part of the world, inland rail will provide 16,000 jobs in construction from end to end, and the opportunities for relocating businesses right along that corridor are enormous. There's a big discussion in this country at the moment with waste recycling—it's a massive problem—and the opportunities for regional Australia to take advantage of recycling, to take advantage of cheap freight through inland rail and to take advantage of the increased road networks, provided through the Roads of Strategic Importance program, the Roads to Recovery Program and other programs, to help grow local economies.

There is no greater form of welfare than having a job. Opportunities come from secure employment and stability in families. In disadvantaged areas where we have introduced the cashless debit card, that card has helped families manage their income. It's put stability into those communities and made those communities a much more pleasant and safer place to live. That, in turn, has encouraged our young people to stay in school and to move through apprenticeships and into local jobs. They have the pride that comes with that, which is central to this government. Things like the asset write-off for small business so that there's a cash stimulus generating income for young tradies so that they can upgrade their tools and equipment create jobs and certainly provide a very, very good, solid base. Small businesses is actually the largest employer in this country, so we need to create an environment where small businesses get incentives not only to invest in their business but to buy equipment to grow their profitability and get that cash moving around.

The member for Gorton mentioned the drought, and I will touch on that. The government has invested billions of dollars in drought assistance. Obviously, as it continues to bite, we will need to do more. As someone who has lived in regional Australia and lived in my electorate for all my life, I know how important it is that we have policies that are relevant to the people we represent—not knee-jerk reactions driven by populism. We need to make sure that those funds are going to the communities. The 12½ thousand farmers who are now on FHA are testament to the fact that we have policies that are getting to the people who need it the most.

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