Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday at the National Press Club the Prime Minister gave himself one giant pat on the back. He's doing a great job; all you need to do is just go and ask him. There were no new announcements and no grand plans for the future, but the stats and the graphs were an exercise in self-congratulation of epic proportions.

Here we are in the eighth year of this government. The Prime Minister and his government are looking quite comfortable as they are entrenched on that side of the parliament. They are luxuriating in the blue carpets and strolling the grounds of Kirribilli and the Lodge, but there is a certain detachment from the Australian people. It is hard to imagine a speech that is more divorced from the reality of the Australian experience than that which we heard yesterday. On this day there are two million Australians who are looking for work—Australians who are unemployed or who are underemployed. To be sure, COVID-19 has dealt a very significant blow. There were businesses, particularly small businesses, that had a line struck through their business model literally overnight. We should never forget that this was a government which, at the outset, had absolutely no intention of putting a wage subsidy in place—no plan whatsoever for having a connection between those businesses and their employees. JobKeeper has been a game changer, but it came about because of the advocacy of Labor. It's what we said and what we did that meant it happened.

Here we are in February 2021, and JobKeeper is due to end next month, in just eight weeks. If you have a business that has no chance of having the circumstances which existed before COVID-19 being put back in place, that is a devastating time line looming on the horizon. If you are a travel agent or if you are operating in the tourism industry and are reliant on international tourists or if you are in some way connected with aviation, you're not through this. There's no prospect of those businesses being back in place. Just a couple of weeks ago I went to Degraves Street in Melbourne, that iconic strip in the heart of the city, which is famed for its restaurants and its coffee shops. Normally it's a part of the world which is teeming with people, but they're not there right now, and all those businesses are doing it tough. The simple fact is this: if JobKeeper is removed before those businesses are in a position to operate properly then we are going to see them go bust, and, with that, we will see the loss of thousands of jobs.

But even before COVID-19 struck, this was a government which had an appalling record when it came to jobs and employment. Throughout the entirety of the tenure of Scott Morrison as the Prime Minister of this country, there have been more than a million people who have been underemployed.

In my electorate alone since 2013, we've seen Ford stop making cars and we've seen Alcoa stop producing aluminium at its smelter at Point Henry. I'm not here saying that every job can be saved, but you can certainly have a go. And that's not what this government has ever been about. In fact, this is a government that went and dared the car industry to leave our shores, and that's exactly what they did, in decisions from Toyota and Holden. At that moment, we lost significant industrial capability, because at that moment we lost the most complex manufacturing that we were doing in this country. Rather than climbing the technological ladder, we fell down it.

What happened at that moment was that well-paid secure jobs were also lost. I know lots of people who worked at Alcoa and Ford. Some of those people have not got a job since, but, of those who have, none of them have got the kind of well-paid, secure job that they used to have when they worked at Alcoa or Ford. When you have a job of that kind and you lose it and it is replaced by a part-time, casual job where you're being paid half as much, that is not a transaction which is like-for-like. And this is where the stats don't tell the story. This is a government which loves those statistics, but they are not telling the story of the human experience in communities across our country.

But there is one group of jobs that those opposite will protect and defend with the intensity and focus of a feeding shark, and that is their own. You only need to look at the sports rorts program in the lead-up to the last election. In a desperate moment, that's what they put in place—a $100 million scheme, where most of the decisions that were made went against the recommendation of the effective independent umpire, Sport Australia. Instead, what we had was a colour-coded spreadsheet being directed from the office of the Prime Minister himself, based on the marginality of the seat in which the particular sports club was located. For hundreds of sports clubs, thousands of hours were put in by volunteers to produce those applications, which never stood a chance because of the place in which those sporting clubs were located. If the votes inside those sporting clubs weren't going to help protect this man's job, then he was not going to give a damn.

When you look at those who used to serve in this government, like the former finance minister going for a job in the OECD, no expense is spared. The Air Force? A private plane to fly all over the world? Do whatever you want, whatever it takes, to get that job. But they're not focused on the jobs of the Australian people, because, in the last eight years, this government has become very, very focused on itself and has forgotten all about the Australian people and their interests and their jobs.

Well, between now and the next election, you're going to see a strong contrast in terms of what's put forward by Labor, because we care about the interests and the jobs of the Australian people. We are on their side.

With humility and with respect, we are going to go to small business and seek to amplify their voice as that group which has been on the frontline of the COVID crisis, knowing that, as we do, the sorts of initiatives that they're really relying on at the moment—things like loss carry-back and instant asset write-off—are ideas and concepts which found their origins in the work of Labor, from this side of the House, from the wonderful work of the member for Gorton when Labor was last in office. So when small businesses go to the election when it next comes and look for a reason to vote, the first place they will see is Labor. And we will be doing everything we can to put forward a plan for how we are going to build and rebuild industry and manufacturing in this country, in a First World context, knowing that the only way you can do that and make a profit is for us to be making product at the highest value level.

That means climbing the technological ladder, and that means placing science at the centre of our national discussion in a way that has not been done before, and certainly in a way that is not done by this government. This is a government which enables antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists. This is a government which is cutting science jobs from the CSIRO; that's its science policy. Ours is going to be very, very different indeed. Most importantly, we understand the importance of turning science into jobs. Under this government, Australia stands as one of the worst commercialisers of public research in the OECD. The ability of this government to translate our basic research into jobs in this country has been singularly hopeless. So that is going to be different, and we will have plans in respect of that.

We will have plans in respect of small business and its place within our economy. Unlike this government—which has been focused on itself, which has been focused on its own jobs, which has been focused on the jobs of its friends and its mates and those who used to serve within it—we will be different. We are going to be focused on the Australian people. We will be focused on their interests. We will be focused on their employment and their opportunities in the future, and we are going to do everything we can between now and the next election to advocate for their jobs, because we are on their side.

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