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

One of the outcomes of the Jobs and Skills Summit was drawing a line under a divisive decade of missed opportunities and warped priorities which have made the economy weaker and our people poorer. I want to thank everybody who participated in that summit, who came there not seeking unanimity but seeking common ground. We found that common ground and we are now ready to move forward together.

We wanted the summit to achieve at least three things—first of all, to bring people together around those big challenges; secondly, to agree on some proposals for immediate action; and, thirdly, to set a clear direction for future work. And that is exactly what happened. On Friday, we released an outcomes document that came from the conversations and the consensus that we achieved at the summit. At the centre of that is maintaining full employment in a way that benefits more of our people. At the centre of it was improving productivity growth at the end of the worst decade for productivity in 50 years. We came together to deal with the labour shortages and the skills shortages which are acting as a handbrake on our economy. We came together to boost wages, to get wages growing again, after a decade of deliberate wage stagnation and wage suppression. We came together to invest in the industries and in the jobs which will deliver the opportunities for our people into the future.

To help do all this, the outcomes included 36 initiatives that we are taking immediate action on, including boosting investment in fee-free TAFE, boosting the amount that pensioners can earn from work, beginning the work to repair the broken bargaining system which has been a key contributor to wage stagnation for too long and responsibly increasing the permanent migration target to address the labour shortages which are affecting all Australians. All of these areas are about responding to our economic challenges. That's what the summit was about and that's what the government is about.

At the summit, Australians saw us working together to tackle these challenges. Employers, unions, premiers, chief ministers, the Australian of the Year, the Leader of the Nationals and the crossbenchers were all prepared to seek that common ground and to have a go and not have a whinge. In that regard, the Leader of the Opposition was left out, wallowing in his own irrelevance.

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