Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do have a grievance, concerned with the current management of the economy in the first instance. After six years of the Liberal government, in the third term of the Liberal government, the economy is undoubtedly floundering and Australians are struggling to meet the cost of living. The Morrison government has no plan to turn things around. In fact, it appears to be in denial that there's even a problem. The economy is growing at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis. Wages have stagnated, almost two million Australians are looking for work or for more work, and living standards and productivity are going backwards.

Right when the Australian economy needs responsible, proportionate and measured stimulus, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are all about politics and not about a plan. It is time that the Liberal government brought forward a budget update to fix their forecasts and properly outline an economic plan that supports the floundering economy and better safeguards it from global risks. The economy is growing at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis. Unemployment has increased, with almost two million Australians looking for work or for more work. Wages growth is slowing, with wages growing at one-sixth the pace of profit. This government is presiding over the worst wages growth on record.

Household debt has surged to record levels, to 190 per cent of disposable income. Household living standards have declined, with real household median income lower than it was in 2013. Business investment is down 20 per cent since the Liberal government came to office, and is now at its lowest level since the 1990s recession. Consumer confidence is well below average, consumption growth is weak and annual retail trade volumes are growing at the slowest pace since the 1990s recession.

Australia became one of the two fastest growing economies in the OECD under Labor and the eighth fastest when the government changed hands in 2013. But under this government we have dropped to 20th—that is, from 8th to 20th. So much for being strong managers of the economy! Net debt has more than doubled under the Liberals and has rocketed to record highs. These are terrible figures, but what is particularly terrible is that the government is not paying attention. They're asleep at the wheel. They're supporting their surplus by cutting funding and underspending on areas such as the NDIS. They're simply in denial of the state of the Australian economy.

Speaking on the Australian economy, I want to dig a little deeper than the usual figures that we hear so often. We continue to drift down the global league ladder in a whole range of metrics. We know the basic ones—wage growth and productivity growth, but there's a whole stack of others that really highlight exactly how bad things are.

A good indicator of economic health relative to the rest of the world is the value of currency, and the Aussie dollar tumbled against every major currency in 2018-19. It lost more than five per cent against the US dollar and just about every other currency. But, thanks to Alan Austin, who wrote a really quite good article on the economy, I know we did actually rally slightly against the Zambian currency! But that's about it. We slid marginally against the euro—I'm being slightly unfair—but really we tumbled against virtually every major currency.

The number of people unemployed in June was back above 710,000. Again, for all the talk that the government puts out about growing jobs, the jobless rate was 5.24 per cent, barely changed from 5.31 per cent a year earlier. And the figure was back above 710,000 for the first time in 13 months. That's at a time of boom around the world. We are declining in our global standing on jobs. Our jobless rate now ranks 75th in the world and 19th in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That's the club of 36 wealthy developed countries, and we should rank higher, but we're 19th. But 75th in the world—that's an astonishing figure. This is the lowest we've ranked since records have been kept. When government changed in 2013, Australia ranked eighth. Now, even against the biggest economies in the world, we rank 17th. So we've gone backwards on that as well.

On youth unemployment, we've gone backwards. The number of 15- to 19-year-olds out of work has grown. In fact, it's ballooned. It's quite ridiculous. It's up over 19 per cent. As a proportion of the youth workforce, it has risen from 13.9 to 16.4 per cent. We've collapsed again, from eighth in the world when government changed hands, to 11th in 2014, to 14th in 2015 and to 18th in 2017, and now we're 20th, the lowest we've ever been on youth unemployment.

Hours worked per person fell from 32.3 hours per month to 32.1 over the year, the third consecutive annual decline. Again, these indicators are not good. And the number of weeks that people spend looking for work has just gone through the roof. I've spoken about this in the parliament before. In June 2013, just before we lost government, people spent an average of 37.7 weeks on Newstart before getting a job. A year ago the figure was up to nearly 50 weeks. Now it's 50.9. That's 13 weeks longer than when the government took office. Again, these are terrible figures.

We hear from the government about how good they are for seniors. Well, they're really not. The number of people who are working above retirement age is at an all-time high. The percentage of Australia's population aged 65 and over who are working has increased from 13.8 to 15.1 in the last financial year.

On government debt, we hear from the government that they're fixing Labor's debt. Well, you don't fix it by doubling it, and it has actually doubled since the government came to power. It's now $542 billion. Some people may remember that, when the government were elected, in 2014 one of the first things they did was remove the debt ceiling so that they wouldn't have to keep coming back to the parliament to increase the debt ceiling. So it was removed altogether, with the help of the Greens. That was just as well, because the debt has doubled. It's now $542 billion, an amazing amount of money. This consolidates Australia's position as having the second-highest debt blowout of all OECD countries since 2013.

This is the real challenge for the government. They whitewash out, photoshop out, the fact that there ever was a global financial crisis. But we came out of the global financial crisis better than most countries in the world, and now, while the rest of the world economy booms, we've gone backwards. We have the second-highest debt blowout of all OECD countries since 2013, and this is from a government that claim to be good on debt. I don't know how you can be paying off someone else's debt if you've doubled it and you've totally blown Australia's position in the world in terms of debt. It really is quite astonishing what the government get up to with their rhetoric. The reality is something quite different.

In the remaining time I want to talk about the disaster of the NDIS, and about one case in particular. Alanna is a six-year-old girl who loves singing, swimming and making magic potions and wants to say her promise as a junior girl guide. She was born with fragile X syndrome and autism. In November, following her annual review, Alanna's mother was told to expect less funding, because her daughter had met her goals last year. Last year's funding was not enough to provide Alanna with what she needs, but she did meet her goals, and her goals were such simple ones. They were really the kinds of basic things you expect a girl to be doing in her home. The funding was about one-third of that suggested by therapists. The funding ran out after nine months and Alanna's mother was forced to remortgage their home several times in order to fill the gap in services, so that she could provide the services her daughter needs. This year, Alanna desperately needs therapy to support her in continuing on her path to becoming a functioning member of society and in transitioning to mainstream classes at school. But her mother expects to receive half the funding needed for her daughter. It is a disgrace. (Time expired)

See this speech in context