Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I've got to say that if anybody ever says that the Leader of the Opposition is completely humourless, I am just going to point to the shadow Treasurer. He appointed this man as the shadow Treasurer of Australia, who is no good with names and no good with numbers. A bit of self-reflection would not have gone astray—just a little bit of self-reflection.

There we have the member for Hume puffing himself up, in only the way that a King's private schoolboy can, and demanding that the government of nine weeks deliver something that this mob couldn't deliver in nine years. In nine weeks they demand that we deliver something that they could not land in nine years. Just a little bit of self-reflection wouldn't go astray. We deliver a comprehensive plan to confront the crisis that was left behind by this rabble over here—to confront the mess that they have left us—and what does the member for Hume say? 'That's very good, but where's the plan?' It is a joke. They should reflect on the nine years that have got them on that side of the chamber: a complete policy vacuum that has left the country economically weaker and in a state of disarray with our relationships with our near neighbour and with our friends in Europe that we have spent the last nine weeks trying to patch up. Our relations with the Pacific, Europe and the US were in a worse state when we came back into government than when we left it. We've got a crisis in wages, a crisis in skills and $1 trillion worth of debt, made worse by the mob on that side because of their addiction to rorts, waste and mismanagement. When the waste and mismanagement wouldn't get them far enough, they'd fiddle the books, and I'll have more to say about that in a moment. The member for Hume has a long history of fiddling the books, and we'll reflect on that.

The title of this MPI asks what we are doing about the budget and what we are doing about cost of living. Well, there is nobody in this parliament who is more responsible for the cost-of-living crisis that we are facing in this country than the member for Hume. The man who demands a plan from Labor is personally responsible for destroying 22 of his own government's plans. There is nobody in this parliament who had a greater responsibility than the member for Hume for destroying every single one of the previous government's inadequate plans on energy. When those opposite come to the dispatch box and complain about the price of energy going up—and up, and up, and up—they should look to themselves, because the fault is in the mirror.

As if smashing a sensible plan for a clean energy future that will drive investment and keep prices down is not enough, when the regulator presents those opposite with the consequence of their nine years of inaction and vandalism, what do they do? They hide the truth. The member for Hume himself is responsible for hiding the truth. There was a 19.7 per cent increase in energy prices because of his disastrous policies, and what does he do? He tries to hide the truth. He's got a long history of hiding the truth. We all remember the Clover Moore affair, when the member for Hume got his office to make some fake documents to try to get a press release out and get a boost against the well-respected Sydney Lord Mayor. This guy has a long history of fiddling the books and hiding the truth. He cannot be trusted. When he offers to hand us a document with a little bit of help on some plans, you'd better check the provenance of that document, because it's probably been doctored.

He demands a plan, and we've got one, because on this side of the House we understand that galloping inflation is a regressive tax on the lowest-income households in the country, so fighting inflation will be at the core of our plan. It's why, this morning, the Treasurer announced in this place a comprehensive plan about how we would address the economic challenges that we have inherited from the other government. The first step in this plan is ensuring that we get the budget in order. That may cause some pain for the Nats, who see the job of government as being to deliver a channel of pork barrel to their electorates. It may cause the Nats a bit of pain, but what is good for the budget is going to be good for the country. It could cause some embarrassment for members on the other side when we expose the fact that they have knowingly cooked the books, that they have been dishonest with the Australian people about the state of the budget.

There is no example that better puts a spotlight on their ineptitude than how they have managed the Modernising Business Registers program. There has never been a party in Australia's political history that has talked more about economic management but done so little of it. There's never been a party that has talked so much about business but understood so little about it. Managing a modern economy requires us to have a national registry of companies, company directors, Australian business numbers and those participating in the financial markets. It is absolutely critical and it is at the core of a modern economy. They have overseen the dilapidation of this system. They told parliament that they had a plan to put it back together again. They told parliament it was going to cost a little over $450 million. But now we discover hiding in the back of their budget was a trick, a time bomb, waiting for us, an over-a-billion-dollar blowout in this essential program. There has never been a party that talked more about economic management but did so little of it—a billion-dollar blowout which they tried to hide from the Australian people, fixed into the back of the budget books. It will take Labor to clean this mess up.

We on this side have a plan for jobs and skills. When you talk to businesses, large or small, they say their number one challenge is finding the workers with the skills, and that job has been made so much harder because over the last nine years this mob over here have run down vocational education, run down higher education and thought the responsibility of the education minister was to wage culture wars on schools, on vocational education and on universities in this country.

An Anthony Albanese Labor government will wage a war on skills shortages in this country because we think that is the responsibility of people who have the portfolio of education, of people who are responsible for universities and vocational education. Australia needs a war on the skills shortage, not more of this protracted and confected culture war of this pathetic mob over here. We understand that a way of getting more women into the workforce is by ensuring that families can balance the cost of child care, so Labor has a part of its plan to ensure that we can help families with the cost of child care with two benefits: not only reducing cost-of-living pressures on households but getting more workers, including skilled workers, back in the workforce for longer. We have a comprehensive plan.

In the time we have left, I want to address the issue of wages. Unlike those opposite, who had baked into their budget a plan for real wages to go backwards over the next three years, we have a plan to turn that around. On the previous government's watch, real wages went back by 2.5 per cent in the last three years alone and they intended for that to continue for the next three years. So while the member for Hughes, with his confected, puffed-up outrage, criticises us for not having a plan for real wages, nothing could be further from the truth. In our first month in government we have gone to the lowest-paid workers, the people these guys see as the economic bumper bar in any downturn, and we have convinced the Fair Work Commission to increase their wages by 5.3 per cent and, on top of that, ensured that their superannuation goes up by another 0.5 per cent—a 5.8 per cent increase for the lowest-paid workers in Australia, confected outrage from this pathetic mob over here.

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