Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I'd love to talk to this MPI. As I've said a number of times, and over the last few MPIs I have spoken to—and, Deputy Speaker Llew O'Brien, when you have been in the chair as well; so you would have heard me say this before—I certainly understand that it is an opposition's job to hold a government to account and to point out failings or places or things that a government could do better. They should and they certainly do. But, in the eight years that I've had the pleasure to be here and represent my community, I don't think I have ever heard any of those opposite say anything positive about anything. If you listened to them in isolation, you would seriously think that we as a country are a basket case—and we are anything but a basket case. So, by all means point out where you think we can do better, but that would probably be taken constructively, if, in the same breath, you could at least acknowledge how well as a country we have done and how well as a government we have sometimes done.

So let me talk about some of the things that you would not believe could be possible if those opposite were the only people you listened to. We are one of the few developed countries, if not the only developed country, in the world that has more jobs now in our economy—more jobs in this country post when the pandemic started to now. That is an amazing achievement. Unemployment peaked at 7.5 per cent and has gone to 5.1 per cent, and 115,000 jobs have been created, as of the last stats we saw, in May alone. That is something to celebrate. That is something that we can all acknowledge is good news for our country. I have not heard one member opposite mention that statistic since it came out two weeks ago. They just refuse to acknowledge anything positive that is going on economically in this country. We have also had our economic growth figures come out. Our economy is now bigger than it was pre-pandemic. In the developed world, that is very unusual. It's a wonderful result. This is world-leading stuff, but, again, in not one platform has anyone on the other side acknowledged that. I think this is a great flaw of theirs—yes, criticise and, yes, offer things that you can do better—but the fact that they can never, ever, ever say anything positive in this chamber about anything that's going on is just ludicrous.

On the health front: again, you'd think we were a basket case. But by any measurement we're doing really well on the health front as well. You cannot eliminate this virus; the health professionals were saying right at the beginning of this that you cannot eliminate a virus. Whatever you do there are going to be outbreaks; and we've certainly had our outbreaks. But if we look at any statistic—any comparable international statistic—we have done exceptionally well. One that is often quoted is that we would have had something like 30,000 more deaths in this country. We've had comparable statistics with the virus outbreak in other parts of the world. And we were asked if our aim was to flatten the curve, and we did flatten the curve.

Again, have we heard anything positive in the last 12 months from anyone on the other side about anything we've done on the health front? No. They don't talk about it; they'll look for anything that they think isn't perfect and that's all they'll talk about. On the vaccine rollout in this country: seven million Australians have had their vaccine. I will in fact just let you know, Deputy Speaker, that I had my own vaccine—the AstraZeneca vaccine—two weeks ago and I had no side effects. Seven million people in this country have been vaccinated. Yes, there was a hiccough at the start with supply from Europe of that vaccine. But there's no acknowledgement about the statistics of what has been happening. No-one opposite will ever say, 'It's great to see the vaccination rates increase across this country over the last few weeks'. You will never hear them say that.

There's nothing positive from them at all on any of this stuff. The sad thing about that is that while they can't say it, their voters can. I've had Labor voters in my electorate say, 'Kevin, the Prime Minister and you, as a government, are doing a good job.' They know because they see it—

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