Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The previous speakers on the government side have completely missed the point of this MPI. All they've done is stand here and reiterate lots of glossy government announcements. We acknowledge that this government has made big glossy announcements. There wasn't a photo op the Prime Minister wouldn't attend. There wasn't a vest or a hard hat he wouldn't put on. There wasn't a worker he wouldn't stand next to. But they've failed to deliver. So standing here and repeating announcements not yet delivered misses the entire point of this debate. This is a government that gets a gold star in announcements, and fails—fails to deliver, at a time in Australia's history when we need a government that delivers, a government that does the work and does what it says it'll do.

Talk about JobKeeper: this government had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to a wage subsidy model. The restrictions had already been in place. Workers had been stood down. The hardest day of employers' lives, they'll tell you, were when they had to shut their businesses on the Thursday. They were closed. It wasn't until the following week that this government even made an announcement about JobKeeper, and they had to be dragged to it. On that announcement of JobKeeper: they grossly overestimated how many workers they would help; they excluded people who work in universities; they excluded casuals; they excluded people who work in the airline industry—and the list continues, not to mention how they failed to deliver what they'd committed to businesses.

One particular measure which they outed themselves on in today's question time was that they committed $40 billion in loans to help small businesses survive, yet have delivered less than five per cent of that. The whole point of this funding was to help people in the early days of the pandemic. We are now in September. Businesses needed this support in March, April, May, June, July and August. You are behind in your delivery program. And why? Because you've already announced it, so you don't really care. It demonstrates a government that cares more about the announcement, more about the headlines and more about the evening news than about the actual community and economy and the people they claim to represent.

Child care is one of the biggest failures of this government, in an area where the minister doesn't even know what's going on and with a Prime Minister who just makes it up as he goes along. They first extended JobKeeper to early childhood education, and it did help keep some people in that area. Then when the restrictions came back on in Victoria they cut JobKeeper. They kicked all the early childhood educators off JobKeeper. Then we started to hear that workers in the sector were being stood down. The government came out and guaranteed no worker would be stood down. Maybe they should pick up the phone and speak to early childhood educators in Victoria, because far too many have lost their jobs, far too many have had a significant loss in pay and loss in hours, yet this government won't talk to them. It's not a headline.

This government has drastically failed with what is going on in aged care. They are up here trying to defend the indefensible. They've said they've made all these announcements, yet when I talk to people in my electorate about what's happening in aged care there's a big gap between what the government is saying and what's happening on the ground, particularly with the workforce.

I want to acknowledge the hard workers, the people who are working in aged care, working back-to-back shifts, working seven-day rosters, to try and make sure that their facilities stay safe and that residents are protected. Not many of them have seen the retention bonuses that the government boasts about. Not many of them have seen the extra payments so they work in one facility—not many employers have actually applied for it, because it was so complicated or because they didn't technically qualify for it. Yet the government will stand here and claim, 'We've got a plan; it's under control,' when it is so grossly not true. It's not what's happening on the ground.

It's not just what's been happening during the pandemic where this government has failed. It happened prior to the pandemic. It is what this government does. Prior to the pandemic they announced this great new fund for female-friendly change facilities to be built across regional Australia. Yet we discovered later that most of the money has been spent on pools, and even pools in northern Sydney—not really regional Australia. This government has failed. They announce big but deliver little.

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