Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] It is my pleasure to follow the member for Fenner, who as ever gave us a detailed critique of the piece of legislation before the parliament. I will begin by suggesting that, with what we saw happen today with headlines this morning suggesting that Labor were going to be blocking this piece of legislation only to then find ourselves in the House with no legislation before us and in fact the legislation being brought on because of the contributions from the members for Watson and Gorton, we find ourselves now with a government sitting across from us in this chamber who misunderstand the difference between critiquing or seeking to improve something and blocking something.

This government has a history of thinking that its first draft of anything is better than anybody else's thoughtful contribution might make it. It is years now that I have stood in this place—although today I am standing in my office in Werribee!—and listened to the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government try to tell us that its first brush at something will always get the best outcomes for this country. Rather than work with the opposition, particularly in this incredibly difficult time of a global pandemic and a recession, this government insists on playing political games with things that are incredibly important to the lives of all Australians, not least of which the lives of the community that I represent in Lalor.

Of course Labor supports wage subsidies. Labor called for wage subsidies, and this government eventually came to the table and introduced the JobKeeper subsidy. This is a point of pride for Labor members. It is a point of pride in my community that Labor called for this. It is a point of pride in my community that the government took this action. It's an absolute point of pride that my community thinks that those of us who work in Canberra to represent them care about their day-to-day lives.

That brings me to this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation, so quaintly named 'JobMaker' by the Prime Minister, needs caveats put on it already—'It's the JobMaker if you're under 35.' It doesn't speak to the people in my electorate who are over 35. It doesn't speak to the high number of now unemployed, becoming long-term unemployed, women over 50 who live in my electorate who face financial crises every day, who in this pandemic and this recession have now almost given up hope of ever working again. It gives them nothing. It makes no jobs for them. We want to critique this particular measure from the most recent budget exactly around that point: if you're going to call something a universal name like 'JobMaker' then make it work for everyone.

Let's look closely at who this locks out, because it mirrors some of the people who were locked out in the first place, who were locked out of JobKeeper. Casuals—people who were working casually—who had not been employed for 12 months were locked out of financial support from this government. The university sector was locked out of financial support from this government. Dnata workers in my electorate were locked out of support from the JobKeeper program because, although they'd worked for Qantas for years, the company had changed hands and was now owned by a foreign company. They were locked out of JobKeeper by this government. Let's look at the New Zealanders who live in my electorate, who are still locked out of JobKeeper. Let's look at all of those people whom the government ignored then, and then let's have a look at their latest effort, which is JobMaker. What we see in this latest effort is that they have 'seen the light', if you like, in terms of youth unemployment and the impacts the recession will have on young people and people up to 35, but they have failed to see that this will be a doubling-down of loss for people over 35—people in electorates like mine, with very high numbers of people reliant on JobKeeper.

The government need to go back to the starting place. They need to go back and review what they found with their own Restart program, which was aimed at finding employment for people over 50. They need to have a look at the figures they've managed to produce there. They need to acknowledge that they've spent only $254 million of a $520 million budget and they haven't helped the number of people they thought they would help with that program. They need to figure out why these things are occurring. They need to look deeply into their PaTH program, which was supposedly about youth unemployment but hasn't met the huge expectations around it; in fact, it has been widely criticised. And they have to look at this program—not just at who it excludes automatically but at what the impacts of its implementation might be, particularly around insecure work and the creation of part-time opportunities, not full-time opportunities, for the people who are going to find work here. What are they saying to young people? 'It's okay; you'll only be partially blocked out of your financial future, because companies will be able to get this for people who work 20 hours a week.' Well, a full-time job in this country is not 20 hours a week.

Like other members on our side of the House, I hope the government look at these things seriously. I hope they don't walk out of this parliament, this piece of legislation having been passed at some point, think, 'That's the job done,' wipe their hands and keep moving. They are a government who need to learn the lessons of review and revision. They are a government who need to learn the lessons about listening. They need to listen to the people who are already critical of this, including those in the opposition.

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