Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Maybe! Except we don't it at all, until 2022! So tell me that South Australia's getting one. We are the third largest economy, we have got more employees, more workers, in Western Sydney than in Adelaide. We're slightly under Brisbane. We've got more knowledge workers then virtually any—

Opposition members interjecting—

I know! But we've got one! One west of Marrickville! Not Strathfield, not Penrith, not Campbelltown, not Liverpool, not Ryde, not north west—unbelievable. And I'll just say this to the government: as happy as I am that Parramatta eventually—if it ever actually gets the NBN—will get a business hub—I know, from working in business myself and from running a trade association for many years, that it's the speed of your customers that counts for most modern businesses. If you're actually selling online or you're working online or your staff are working from home, it's not just the speed in the little centre where your office is; it's actually how fast everyone else can engage with you. This is absurd. It's absurd that in 2020 I am standing in—not now, but I do live in—what is the third largest economy in Australia and we're not getting the NBN until 2022, and then with a population of over two million people we're getting one business hub. One. Unbelievable. So again, it's all spin. If you dig underneath it, there's no substance.

I can tell you what's happening with this, and this is a really important point when it comes to the NBN. What we're starting to get with this new strategy is NBN for people who can afford it. They have clearly chosen electorates where businesses can pay higher money to get a faster connection. So we will find a two-tiered NBN—which I know we're going to get anyway with this government, but it will accelerate that. It will hardwire in, literally, the inequity. It will hardwire it in. It is so unacceptable I cannot believe it. I just cannot believe it.

Let's look at another area where there's more spin than substance: the announcement of a $1.5 billion manufacturing fund. This is the government that dared the car industry to leave. This is the government that's done nothing on manufacturing for as far back as you can remember. Including during the Howard years, they did nothing. This is the government that has spruiked that business should go where it's cheaper to run. This is the government that totally failed to understand the changing nature of manufacturing for years and that the advantage of labour is disappearing with advanced manufacturing. They pushed manufacturing offshore at the very time when fragmented supply chains and modern manufacturing techniques were giving us the advantage back. But away it goes! They pushed it away exactly at the time when we should have been building it.

Now they've discovered that manufacturing actually really matters, apparently—like they've discovered that fibre is better than 50,000 kilometres of copper!—and they're going to spend $1.5 billion, so they say. Except—again, it was a nice announcement—look at the detail. Finally, Minister Andrews admitted on Sunday that only $40 million of that will be spent this financial year. This is one of the programs that replaces those 30,000 people that come off JobKeeper in my electorate alone at the end of March. This is it: $40 million this financial year. And then she went on to say that the really big grant program was the $800,000 collaboration stream, and it's only expected to fund 10 projects. I'm kind of speechless. It is all spin. There is nothing here. There's a trillion dollars in debt, a deficit of $100 billion, and there is nothing to show for it here—nothing at all.

Let's look at who else was really left out of the budget: the current people on JobSeeker. Again, in my electorate we currently have 12,053 people relying on JobSeeker or youth allowance, up from 4,900 before COVID-19—large numbers. And that doesn't include, by the way, all the people that the government managed to sneak off into the side: all the people here on skilled visas, all the international students, all the people here on bridging visas, you name it—all the people they managed to pushed off to the side with no support at all. So the actual unemployment rate, the actual number of people in my electorate that are struggling and do not have work, is much greater than this. And, of course, JobKeeper is hiding the true number as well—until the end of March and then we'll see what happens. But there's nothing in this budget for these people that are really, really struggling. In fact, the government has said maybe they'll look at it in the midyear, but they're not making any commitment. They said it would go back to $40 a day, but now they're not quite sure.

I just have to say this: there are over 12,000 people unemployed in my electorate, 8,000 of those became unemployed because of COVID. Even if the government actually believes that people who were on unemployment benefits before COVID are just lazy—I don't believe that for a second because I know many of them—the 8,000 who have joined the queue since then had jobs. How on earth can those people plan how they're going to deal with the reduction in their income if they don't have any certainty at all? What do they do if they have long-term leases? Are they going to continue renting or not? They don't know because they don't know what they're going to be getting after 31 December. If they have a kid in child care at the moment, because one adult is working and one's not, and it's becoming unaffordable, do they take their child out of the childcare place knowing that, if they then get a job, they won't be able to get that place back again? Do they move in with their parents even though their parents don't live in the same school area? How do they get their kids to school if they have to sell the car? They have to make decisions. If they're good money managers and responsible money managers, they need to be able to make those decisions now. You don't wait until two weeks before 31 December and then, in some last minute midyear fiscal thing, announce what people are going to receive in January. You don't do that. It's counterproductive. It's absolutely counterproductive. It makes it harder for people to plan their way through what is the worst crisis of their life. It's harder for people because of the uncertainty that this government is creating by refusing to talk about what they're going to do. It's just not fair.

I really urge the government when they look at my community and the community at large who are currently on JobSeeker, who do not have jobs, to not see the worst characteristics of those people—to not see them as people who are going to say, 'Oh, no, I'm not going to work, because I can get $40 a day. Woohoo; I can stay home and watch television.' That is not who they are. When I look at my community I see people who are doing the best they can possibly do at the moment. I see good in them. Occasionally there is one who is not. Every now again we meet them. Rule breakers break rules, by the way—so new rules won't fix it. But, please, when you look at the Australian community, see the good in them. See what they want to achieve, and see what you can do to help them do that. And $40 a day at the end of December, or a lack of a decision on what you are going to do with them until too late, is not giving people in my community and around Australia the best chance to move through this incredible crisis.

I could talk about a whole range of other things—pensions; you name it—but I've run out of time. But I just want to reiterate to the people who listen to the government: you really have to pay attention to what is underneath it, because, in most cases, all you get is a great announcement with lots of fanfare and a nice press release and then nothing—sometimes zero for years.

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