Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's very interesting to follow the member for Bruce on a day like today, but I'm sure if I was a Labor member in Victoria I would be screaming at the top of my lungs—anything I could do to divert the attention from the Trotskyists versus the Leninists fight that we are now seeing down there in Victoria. So even though the member for Bruce may have been very loud and may have been very agitated and may have been very excited, there is a reason.

Let's just get to the facts of this debate. Let's look at the facts that completely debunk the entire premise that the Labor Party are coming in here with today. The 2019-20 Budget Paper No. 4 shows that the overall cost of government administration, which includes public sector staffing, consultants and contractors, as a proportion of overall government expenditure has decreased from 8.5 per cent of the first year of the Labor government in 2007-08 to seven per cent. So we're getting more resources for less cost. The suggestion that consulting is somehow at record levels is simply not borne out by the facts or the evidence.

The recent ANAO Australian Government Procurement Contract Reporting Update provided a broad analysis of AusTender data over a 10-year period, from 2009-10 to 2018-19. Page 43 of that report said:

The nominal contract value under the consultancy code reported in AusTender in 2018-19 is broadly the same level as it was in 2009-10.

In real terms, the 2018-19 value of a consultancy contract is $91.6 million lower than the 2009-10 value. Furthermore, the annual value of the consultancies on AusTender as a proportion of the total value of contracts has remained relatively stable at approximately one per cent since 2011-12, having fallen from 1.6 per cent in 2009-10. These facts simply dispel the myths behind this entire motion. What we have seen here today is an attack on the private sector.

There are some very interesting numbers. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics catalogue No. 6302 on average weekly earnings looks at the difference between public sector wages and private sector wages. You would have thought that those in the private sector would be paid more because they have more risk, but, no, in November 2019, the date of the last ABS report, full-time adult average weekly ordinary earnings were $1,812 in the public sector compared to $1,617 in the private sector. So, if you are working in the public sector as compared to the private sector, you are being paid 12 per cent more than the private sector. Yet, the Labor Party come in here and want to attack private sector workers that pay for our public sector. That is without looking at the greater risk that private sector workers have, which we have seen during this coronavirus pandemic—the restrictions and the lockdowns.

The ABS numbers also show that in April alone 220,500 full-time jobs were lost because of the coronavirus. You could fill the MCG twice with the full-time jobs lost because of the coronavirus. How many of those were in the public sector? I would say virtually zero. It is the private sector that has worn the full hit on this. Additionally, there are another 373,800 part-time jobs that were lost in the economy in April alone. Again, the vast, vast majority of those were in the private sector. So, it is disgraceful to hear the Labor Party coming in at this stage of our economic history and making these attacks upon the private sector during a private member's motion that has no factual basis whatsoever.

See this speech in context