Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

This government is a dumpster fire of dishonesty, disunity and desperation. We know this because, at a time when the cost of living—petrol, rent and all the rest of it—is going through the roof, real wages are going backwards. On the day that we learn Australia's downturn in the September quarter was the worst in the developed world and at a time when we've lost 200,000 jobs in two months, when we've got two million Australians unemployed or underemployed at the same time as we've got skills shortages—at the same time as there's all of this economic carnage—those opposite just want to talk about the Labor Party. After a decade in office, a wasted decade of missed opportunities, the best they can do in question time and now, in this matter of public importance discussion, is to bang on and on about Labor—about a photo that was taken three years ago, about the last election, about 10 years ago and all the rest of it. That just shows how bereft they are of empathy and compassion for people who are doing it tough. The working families of this country, right around middle Australia, are finding it harder and harder to keep up with the skyrocketing costs of living, because their real wages are going backwards.

There is no empathy or compassion for the small businesses or for the people who lost their jobs because those opposite couldn't get around to ordering vaccines in time and they couldn't build purpose-built quarantine.

After a wasted decade of missed opportunities, they get question after question on the economy, about all these important issues, and all they can do is recite the same old focus group reports and the same old tired lines about the Labor Party. That's just one of the many reasons why it's time to put this government out to pasture. They have had almost a decade now to deal with these issues—the issues in skills, the issues in the labour market, the issues with the cost of living, the issues in the last couple of years with the pandemic—and, at the end of all of that, what do we have? We have the third worst contraction in the economy in the history of the national accounts, the worst-performing economy out of the 28 OECD countries that have reported already for the September quarter.

This is the downturn that we didn't have to have. It didn't need to be this way. We're getting into this position because of the mistakes made by those opposites. Their mismanagement of the pandemic has become mismanagement of the economy as well. It's a downturn which comes courtesy of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, but the bill is being picked up by the small businesses and working families of this country.

With all of this going on and such a terrible set of numbers released by the ABS today, you would think those opposite would show a little bit of contrition. But this is a government which is temperamentally incapable of taking responsibility for anything. This is a government that takes all of the credit when things are going well but none of the responsibility when times are tough and things are difficult. Given that these lockdowns and this downturn were caused by the government and their failures on vaccines and quarantine and economic support, you would think there would be a little bit of responsibility taken. But, again, there is all of this talk about Labor, all of this claiming credit for a recovery which we hope materialises but hasn't yet, at the same time as they don't take responsibility for the downturn itself. You can't have it both ways. You can't take credit for the recovery without taking responsibility for the downturn that we've learned all about in the course of today.

The economy under this government has three defining features. First of all, we have the world's worst downturn in the September quarter, and I've covered that. Secondly, there are the issues in the labour market, with 200,000 jobs lost in two months and two million Australians unemployed or underemployed at the same time as we have all of these skills shortages. That is the second defining feature of this economy. Thirdly, there are the cost-of-living pressures that people are confronting because their real wages are going backwards.

All of this means that we confront the uncertainty of the new strain of the virus from a position of weakness—certainly weaker than we would be had the Prime Minister and the Treasurer done their job—and that's why we can't be complacent about this recovery. Every single person on this side of the House wants the economy to recover strongly. But we have to decide, in this building, whether we want that recovery to be back to how things were before, with all the insecure work and wage stagnation which has defined their decade in office, or whether we can do better, whether we can have a strong and broad and inclusive and sustainable recovery where working families can actually get ahead and aren't left behind. The thing those opposite don't understand is that it's not an economic recovery if people don't share in the benefits.

See this speech in context