Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I begin by acknowledging that today is International Nurses Day and I pay tribute to all the nurses in Fraser and in Australia more generally. I pay tribute to my colleague Ged Kearney and to all the other nurses and healthcare professionals in this chamber. I also pay tribute to my father, a nurse for more than 30 years, who served and saved many. Of course, as other speakers have pointed out, there has never been a time when it has been more appropriate for us to pay tribute to our nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Today we are talking about one aspect of the crisis that we face. It is true to say that our healthcare professionals have dealt incredibly well the health dimensions of the crisis that we currently face. It is important that this chamber also examines the way in which we, as a society and as an economy, deal with the economic aspects of the crisis that we are currently facing. As the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer have pointed out, we come to this place as a constructive opposition. I might point out that we currently don't come to this place as frequently as we'd like, but, nonetheless, when we do get to come here, we come as a constructive opposition. That doesn't mean that we lazily acquiesce to all that's put forward to us by the government, because to do so would be to abdicate our duty as an opposition. But it does mean that we are here to focus on solutions and not to pointscore. It is in that spirit that I make some observations on the way in which this economy has been managed in the past, is managed in the present and may be managed in the future.

One of the speakers opposite said that you can't fatten a pig the day before market. In fact, the context here is that, if we look at the economy and the way in which it had been managed, it is a pig which had been getting thinner over the last seven years, in the lead-up to this crisis. This was not a pig being fattened for market. If it, as a pre-COVID economy, had been taken to market, the returns would have been very lean. We saw productivity growth go backwards for the first time on record. We saw wages growth at its worst on record. We saw household incomes going backwards for an extended period of time. This was an economy that was underperforming. What were the consequences? The consequences—for example, for fiscal policy—were that debt had doubled. We had an economy where there were claims that the budget was back in black when, in fact, it wasn't. On the fiscal policy front, we had far less flexibility than we ought to have had. On the monetary policy front, the independent Reserve Bank had felt the need to reduce interest rates on multiple occasions to far below GFC levels. So, when it came to fiscal policy and monetary policy settings in the lead-up to the COVID crisis, we were in a far weaker position than we ought to have been.

Now it's true to say that nobody could have predicted the exact timing of this pandemic; nobody could have predicted the exact severity of the bushfire season we've just come out of. But there were many, many experts who had said that a pandemic would occur at some point; it was clear that bushfires were getting more and more severe. So it is true to say that we should have been more prepared than we were. Even though we didn't know exactly when these events would occur to disrupt our economy, we knew they would probably occur at some point, and it is fair to say, I think, that our economy was far less prepared than it should have been.

What about the present? We have been a constructive opposition; we have voted for every single piece of legislation this government has brought to us in this chamber, but let's look at the current scheme. Let's look at the JobKeeper program—as the shadow Assistant Treasurer has said, a good idea being badly implemented. When I've talked to dnata workers in my electorate and they asked me: 'Why am I not covered by this when I've worked for years and I've contributed taxes for years—when I've been a good citizen, contributing to this society and economy for years? Why am I not covered by this scheme simply because of a quirk in the ownership of the company that I work for?' I've had no good answer. All I can say to them is that I'll come to Canberra when parliament sits and I'll call on the Treasurer to do what he can do under the regulations: to fix these anomalies at a flick of his pen. And I'll do the same for all the other groups who are currently being arbitrarily excluded from this scheme.

I was approached with a similar question by casuals who have worked for less than 12 months but who have a real connection with their employers. They are casuals who have worked for many years in an industry but who may have switched between employers. I say to them, 'I'll come into this chamber, when I'm given the chance to, and call on the Treasurer to fix these anomalies.'

And what about the future? As other speakers have said—as the previous two speakers on this side have said—the Australian public deserves so much better than snapback to an economy that wasn't working; to an economy that was growing too slowly. We need to move forward to a positive vision—an egalitarian, progrowth vision that this society yearns for. That's why, when we look at economic management of the future, we need to look for a positive, visionary statement, as we— (Time expired)

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