Damian Drum (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for Rankin. This is a great opportunity to talk about what the government has done when faced with these challenges that have been presented to us by COVID. Certainly, the JobKeeper program has been put in place to assist and help in conjunction with JobSeeker—the greatest stimulus and greatest support package this nation has ever seen. JobKeeper was always—always—going to be temporary. As previous speakers have said, it was put in place initially for six months. When we realised that the crisis was not going to abate within the six months, it was extended to 12 months. But, at some stage, we have to wean the nation off JobKeeper and off the JobSeeker supplements that are associated with our Newstart allowances. That's what we're trying to do in the very best way and in a way that keeps everybody's interests to the fore.

As previous speakers have said, there is this debate being put forward by the Labor Party that somehow or other we have vacated the situation. There's some idea that we don't know how to assist and how to stimulate the economy. These are the figures that have been put forward in the last two weeks by the Treasurer about the way that the economy is coming back: a 3.2 per cent increase in the economy bouncing back from where it was, and, on the previous indicators as well, it was 3.1 per cent bouncing back before that. We are finding that the economy is on its way back and, yes, it's coming back from substantial lows, but we are doing so much better than nearly every country that we compare ourselves to.

The Labor Party would just like to compare us with the fairies. They come up with their own figures about how they would like to see the economy. That's fine for them, but you've got to have a dance with reality every now and again, and, when you are faced with reality, you can see that Australia is in a responsible and quite positive position. Yes, we've got a lot more to do, but the reality also is that these jobs that are out there at the moment—certainly in hospitality—are real jobs. You've only got to go onto seek.com to see how many positions of chef are available at the moment or how many positions of restaurant manager are available at the moment. So we're not talking about being a farmhand or a fruit picker. We're not talking about working in abattoirs. We're talking about jobs in hospitality. We're talking about jobs in the trades. So, all of a sudden, with these jobs that have incredible esteem, for some reason in Australia we are struggling to fill these positions.

This is not something that we are making up; just go on to your iPads, go to seek.com, and have a look at how many jobs are out there that as yet are unfilled week on week on week. So we have to balance that up as we keep trying to assist and help and support people without work. We have to keep balancing up the concept that there are so many jobs out there in Australia right now that are not being picked up by the people who are currently receiving the benefits. It seems to be only the coalition that wants to talk about this balance that we have to achieve. There are the ideas associated with the support packages that we have been putting in place, like the HomeBuilder program. In my electorate—and this is consistent with most electorates now—builders have got themselves booked out for 2021. If you're building in the domestic market, the chances are you're now trying to book in houses for 2022. It's been a stunning success. Also, on top of that is the tax assistance we've been giving businesses. Being able to take the instant asset write-off to, effectively, as much as you can afford has given businesses the greatest incentive of all to reinvest in themselves. When businesses reinvest in themselves, what they do is put additional staff on and they keep driving their business to a higher level.

Again, this MPI that has been put forward fails to have any sense of reality about what's really going on in Australia at the moment. It's a very, very challenging time, where we have to continue to train our own and help create more jobs. (Time expired)

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