Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government has failed to provide a comprehensive plan for jobs. At the same time as we have one million Australians unemployed, the government tells us that there will be another 400,000 Australians unemployed by Christmas. We have 345,000 young people unemployed and no plan for jobs from this government.

We have 323,000 Western Australians relying on JobKeeper and 216,000 people in aged care feeling vulnerable and left behind by this government and the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians. There are 195,000 early childhood workers in Australia, with thousands and thousands of them booted off JobKeeper before anyone else. We have 103,000 people in Australia who are waiting for home-care packages, and this government won't do anything about them. There are 23,000 Australians stranded overseas. In my electorate of Perth, there are 10,119 people on JobSeeker. What's this government doing? They're not developing a plan for jobs. Minister Colbeck, after the last two weeks, is still Minister Colbeck. The member for Hughes—I'm honoured that he is here—is still supported by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health. I'll say that again: the member for Hughes is supported by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health. The Deputy Prime Minister has survived another fortnight of undermining by his own side and absolute chaos in the National Party.

When you think about where we started this parliamentary year, talking about sports rorts—and I'll have something to say about sports rorts in my electorate in a moment—at least Bridget McKenzie had the decency to resign. Senator McKenzie acted appropriately. Senator Colbeck should go and have a very long, detailed chat to her about what you do when you comprehensively fail in your portfolio and fail to do your job as a minister of the Commonwealth.

While I'm talking about Senator McKenzie and sports rorts, I note that Senator Dean Smith, a Western Australian who 100 per cent supports Clive Palmer's and Scott Morrison's efforts to tear down the WA hard border, has been running around claiming credit for work that the City of Bayswater, in fact, did. Senator Smith's endorsement letter wasn't enough to get funding for the Noranda Netball Association—which was one of the highest rated applications for sports funding—because they were affected by the sports rorts scandal; he is now claiming that he funded it, when, in fact, it was the City of Bayswater. It's stealing other people's homework, stealing credit for the great work of people like Mayor Dan Bull and the council at the City of Bayswater. I wanted to get that on the record because I think it is a disgraceful and dishonest activity that Senator Smith is currently engaging in.

We talk about having no plan for jobs. Let's talk about some of the jobs that the government have been happy to see walk out the door on their watch. We understand there could be up to 20,000 people lose their jobs in our universities because this government refused to provide JobKeeper to them. I'm thinking of businesses in my electorate, like Matrix Productions in Bayswater. Darryl Edwards worked in the events industry for decades. He is worried about the wind back of JobKeeper, because we still see so many businesses in the events industry completely ignored by this government. As I said before, 86 childcare centres in my electorate had JobKeeper ripped away from them in some sort of sick social experiment. The government said, 'Oh, we'll take JobKeeper off some of the hardest working, lowest paid workers in Australia and see what happens, and then we'll see what we do with the rest of Australia.' We're about to find out what happens to the rest of Australia, when they wind back JobKeeper later this month.

Again, for my electorate of Perth, there's no Perth City Deal. Prime Minister Turnbull—that's how long we've been waiting for the Perth City Deal—promised that back in 2017, when he was Prime Minister. He said it was going to be done in about 12 months. We're still waiting. Pretty much every other state in the country has a city deal, but not Western Australia. This government turns its back on Western Australians.

I've got proof of that again when it comes to the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. Under this deposit scheme there are 10,000 loans. How many of them are in regional Western Australia? I can count them—16; just 16 loans out of 10,000. That's how you treat Western Australia. It is disgraceful. (Time expired)

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