Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker has received a letter from the honourable Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the Government to position the Australian economy for job creation.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The three top priorities of this government should be jobs, jobs, jobs. That is the key priority today, as we get one bit of bad news after another. Only today we see the comment from Dun and Bradstreet:

Worst yet to come as economic outlook deteriorates—27 per cent of firms plan to cut back on staff.

From the ANZ we get, in a media release titled ‘Job advertisements plunge in February’:

• Job ads on the internet and in newspapers fell by 10.4% in February … taking the annual fall to 39.8%.

The National Australia Bank’s monthly business survey, again, shows business conditions down another nine points in February. There is plenty of bad news about. There is plenty of bad news for Australian workers; there is plenty of bad news for those who care about jobs. But the people who care about jobs are not to be found on the government benches today. We asked a very simple question today. We asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether she would guarantee that her Fair Work Bill would not cut one job.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just one!

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just one. That is all we wanted to know, that it would not cut any jobs. She could not or would not answer the question. So we thought we would ask the Prime Minister to see whether he could do a little bit better, and he could not answer it, either. In fact, he gave a rather rambling answer—incoherent, even by his standards—in which he referred to the importance of redundancy payments. He seems to think that redundancy payments are a good substitute for a job.

The coalition believe that of course employees should be paid their entitlements. But we do not want people to be paid redundancy payments because they are losing their jobs; we want them to keep their jobs. We want them to be paid wages, bonuses and overtime in a growing economy. That is what we want. A nation full of recipients of redundancy payments is a nation that is heading down into a very grim place, and that seems to be where the Prime Minister is prepared to take us.

We have been accused by the Prime Minister of lacking a commitment to jobs. In an article I wrote in the Weekend Australian I described the Prime Minister as being ‘possessed with remarkable chutzpah’. ‘Chutzpah’ is a wonderful Yiddish word, which is best defined as the characteristic of a man who kills both his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the basis that he is an orphan. And the Prime Minister is right up there. In fact, a new definition of ‘chutzpah’ is a Prime Minister who accuses his opponents of not caring about jobs when those opponents, during their time in office, saw 2.2 million jobs created, saw unemployment at a 33-year low, inherited Labor unemployment of 8.4 per cent and, when they left office, had unemployment at 4.3 per cent. There is no government in our history that has created more jobs than the coalition did when they were in office over 11½ years.

The Prime Minister can lecture us on many things. We listen patiently, we suffer mightily with his tedious rantings and ravings, but the hypocrisy of his claims about unemployment are too much to bear. We are the party of jobs, we are the party with a track record of creating jobs. We have acted in government and now we seek to act in opposition to hold this government to account for the jobs it is not creating and the jobs it is imperilling.

The Fair Work Bill is being debated in the Senate today. This is the centrepiece of the government’s election platform, although there are substantial parts of it that go well beyond their election platform. This is what they are so proud of. And yet, at a time when Australians are losing their jobs and the government are asked to guarantee that it will not cost jobs, they cannot answer the question. The only reasonable conclusion is this: they know that their Fair Work Bill will cost jobs. They know that they are trading off rewards to their union sponsors on the one hand against Australians’ jobs on the other. They are paying for greater union power with the jobs of Australians.

They have had the opportunity today, twice, to demonstrate that that is not right and to contradict us, and they cannot do it. They cannot do it because they know that they have sold Australian workers out. Australian workers have been abandoned by a government that do not care about jobs. They do not care about keeping Australians in work. When the Prime Minister is asked about jobs and employment, all he can do is waffle on about redundancy payments. The longer he stays as Prime Minister, sadly, the more redundancy payments will be made in this country.

We stand for jobs. We stand for promoting jobs, and we have a plan. One of the Prime Minister’s great techniques is to say that anybody who disagrees with him has nothing to offer. Again and again—we have to put up with it every day in parliament—he says, ‘The opposition just want to sit there and do nothing,’ and he relates his plan, and then he says, ‘And the alternative is to do nothing.’ That is so dishonest. Even Kerry O’Brien took him to task about it. It was too much for Kerry O’Brien to stomach, and that is saying something. The reality is that we have proposed policies which will create jobs. There is an enormous amount of economic evidence, both from Australia and from overseas, including from key economists like Christina Romer, who sits at the very heart of President Obama’s economic policy, that permanent tax cuts provide a much greater stimulus to economic activity and jobs than do one-off cash handouts.

The government say that we supported the cash handout in December, and we did: we voted for it. But we did not say it would be an effective economic stimulus. We said we hoped they had got their advice right from Treasury; we hoped that it was going to work. We wished them well. We said we would see what it developed, what it produced, and we pointed in December, when the evidence came in from the United States, to the poor results from the cash handout in the US. We pointed to that and said: ‘Perhaps this will happen in Australia. Time will tell.’ Well, time did tell, and what it told was that, however meritorious the payments in December may have been as payments because they went to pensioners for whom we were arguing an increase in the single age pension and because they went to families, the fact is that they did not produce the effective economic stimulus that the government promised.

What is remarkable is that the ineffectiveness of those payments as an economic stimulus was almost identical to the experience in the United States. Eighty per cent of the money handed out in the middle of last year in the US was saved; only 20 per cent was spent. And, as Professor John Taylor, who the government describes as a free-market extremist, has demonstrated—and it is just the statistics speaking for themselves—it caused a big bump upwards in household income and a very modest increase in household consumption or expenditure. That is exactly what we saw in the national accounts last week: a big rise in household income, a big lift in household savings and a very modest increase in household consumption—exactly the same pattern. Whether people have different views, we certainly supported the payments on their merits as payments to people in need, but, whether those payments were meritorious or not as payments, the fact is that as an economic stimulus they failed.

Let us give the government some credit. We will cut them the slack they have never cut us—that is for sure. Let us say: ‘All right. You made a blue. It didn’t work out in December. You thought it was going to work out. The Treasury told you it would give a big economic lift. You relied on that and it didn’t work out.’ But then the question arises: why would you back up and make the same mistake again? That is the real issue. They spent $10 billion in December on a cash handout that produced no effective economic stimulus and that did not create one job. Again, we have said to the Prime Minister: ‘Tell us it created one job. Show us the job it created.’ He cannot answer that. So it created no jobs, and yet he backs up and does it again.

The Prime Minister is fond of plans. The shadow Treasurer today ran through a select number of the many plans. They all have a number of points. There are seven-point plans and nine-point plans and five-point plans. I can reveal today, now, a new three-point plan of the Prime Minister’s. The first point in his new three-point plan is that no economic hardship in Australia is ever the responsibility of Kevin Rudd. That is the first point in the plan. Everything is to be blamed on the global financial crisis. It does not matter what policies he enacts, and it does not matter how poorly managed his policies are; every adverse consequence in Australia is due to somebody else. Far from the buck stopping with him, he has tried to create himself as some sort of economic version of ‘Teflon Man’, on whom no responsibility can ever stick.

The second point in the Prime Minister’s new three-point plan is that history began in November 2007. I am surprised that he has not gone as far as Robespierre and tried to renumber the calendar so that we have BK, before Kevin, and AK, after Kevin. History began in November 2007 and therefore it follows that the relative strength of the Australian economy is due solely to the accession of the Rudd government and has nothing to do with the previous coalition government that paid off $96 billion of Labor debt, took the heavy burden of unfunded pension obligations off the shoulders of our children and grandchildren, ran big surpluses, put money at bank, reformed the financial system—nothing good today has got anything to do with the government that was there for the previous 11½ years.

The third point, the one I referred to a moment ago, is that there is no alternative to the Prime Minister’s plans on anything. If you do not agree with the Prime Minister then you support nothing. When he came up with his $42 billion plan, we proposed a measured response: tax cuts, demonstrated to be more economically effective than one-off cash handouts again and again, and most eloquently as seen in the national accounts; and a genuine incentive for investment in terms of doubling the rate of depreciation for investment in energy and water efficiency in the built environment. That is a measure that will not only have environmental benefits but will clearly create jobs in the here and now. That measure again has no counterpart on the government side. We support a well-planned, well-prioritised investment in schools instead of trying to spend $14½ billion dollars over 2½ years on primary school assembly halls and libraries, whether they want them or not. Even Michael Costa, the former New South Wales Labor Treasurer, had to concede it was impossible for the state governments to deliver that in a timely or efficient way. We propose to spend $3 billion—more effective, better targeted and capable of being delivered.

In addition to that, we recognise that the biggest employers are in small business. They are doing it the hardest. The Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy is sitting opposite me here and he said that the best proposal was to give small businesses a 30 per cent cut in depreciation if they buy new equipment. What happens if your cash flow is declining? What happens if you do not need any new equipment? A plainly superior measure is the one we proposed, which is to relieve small businesses for a period of two years of a portion of their superannuation guarantee contribution, to rebate it in fact at the expense of the Commonwealth, thereby putting more cash in their hands and thereby directly reducing the cost of employment.

So, whether it is on the basis of our record in government or whether it is on the basis of our policies proposed in opposition or the issues we are taking up with their Fair Work legislation in the Senate this week, we stand for jobs. Labor stand for unions, they stand for ideology, they are opposed to an economy which will have the vibrancy and the flexibility to create the jobs we need. (Time expired)

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition declared that this MPI is all about jobs, jobs, jobs. The problem is that the only job the opposition leader is interested in is his own. Indeed, I refer to statements by coalition members. In this newspaper article the headline is ‘Costello wants the top job, say Liberal MPs’. That is the one job with which the coalition is concerned: the top job. I noticed during the speech that the member for Higgins did grace the parliament with his presence. I was looking at my colleagues here and they did not seem to be particularly taken by the opposition leader’s speech, but someone who was especially bored and could not stop yawning through that whole performance of the opposition leader was the opposition leader in waiting, the member for Higgins. He could not stop yawning, and the film footage will show that.

The decision by the opposition leader—that is, the present opposition leader—to oppose the Nation Building and Jobs Plan was taken not by him, not initially, but by the member for Higgins. We all remember the member for Higgins appearing on Lateline and just about every program he could appear on saying that the Nation Building and Jobs Plan constituted ‘a poor quality spend’. It was the setting of the terms of the debate on the coalition side by the leader in waiting, the member for Higgins, that led the opposition leader subsequently to oppose the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. Yet they have the hypocrisy to come in here and say that they are on about jobs. Here is a $42 billion fiscal stimulus that they opposed, and in voting against that fiscal stimulus, the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the coalition voted for higher unemployment. That is the truth of the matter. But they say they are interested in jobs.

Let us have a look at the impact of the first stimulus package. The first stimulus package, the Economic Security Strategy, was announced late last year. The coalition, led at the time on that by the present Leader of the Opposition, said:

We support these measures and we are particularly pleased about the measure, the payment to pensioners.

He was asked:

What do you think of the housing measures?

He said:

Well, we support those.

He also said at the same time:

We’re not going to argue about the composition of the package or quibble about it. It has our support. It will provide a stimulus to the economy, that’s for certain.

Let me repeat that. This is the opposition leader saying that the Economic Security Strategy ‘will provide a stimulus to the economy, that’s for certain’.

What are they doing here today? They are criticising the Economic Security Strategy—the very strategy that at the time, on 14 October, the opposition leader said would provide an economic stimulus. And he was right. It did provide an economic stimulus. Let us look, for example, at the retail trade figures. In December, retail trade in Australia rose by 3.8 per cent. That was the biggest monthly increase since August 2000, when the economy was booming. That is a huge increase in retail sales. But what happened around the world? Retail sales fell in that same period, in December: in Canada by 5.4 per cent, in the United States by three per cent, in Japan by 1.9 per cent, in Germany by 0.9 per cent and in New Zealand by one per cent. They are the sorts of comparisons that are relevant—retail sales rising by 3.8 per cent here in Australia and at the same time falling in the advanced countries of the world outside of Australia.

You do not need to just concentrate on those figures. Let’s ask people who are in the retailing business what the Economic Security Strategy actually caused. Michael Luscombe, the CEO of Woolworths, when asked if he had seen evidence of the Economic Security Strategy payments being spent, said:

Yes … we saw it in the basic commodities and that’s been made pretty public. I would think there’s a little bit more legs in it, and there’s no doubt that the timing of the next one which is around March/April is probably about the right time for the next one to come on.

So that is the CEO of Woolworths. Tony Meer, Deutsche Bank Chief Economist, said retailers were ‘bolstered by the cash-bonus-inspired strength in sales’ and went on:

… they have responded in January by retaining higher than usual post-Christmas staff levels.

That means jobs! Katie Dean, ANZ Senior Economist, believes that the government’s stimulus package ‘had worked to retain jobs in January, in tandem with aggressive interest rate cuts’.

Michael Blythe, the CBA chief economist, said:

Policy is working in Australia. Lower interest rates and the first home owners grant have lifted housing activity, and the pick-up in retail sales suggests the government’s cash handouts have worked.

Sara Hoeing, the economist with the Commonwealth Bank, said:

If there were any doubts about the efficacy of government fiscal stimulus packages, and Australian consumers’ willingness to spend, the December retail sales report is a clear rebuttal.

That is a clear rebuttal of what the opposition leader said here today—a clear rebuttal of the opposition leader’s claim that the Economic Security Strategy had not led to an increase in retail sales and had not led to an increase in jobs over that which otherwise would have occurred.

Greg Evans, of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said:

By and large we think (the first round of) the fiscal stimulus package … was effective in making today’s numbers stronger than otherwise would have been.

I will finish with Saul Eslake, ANZ Chief Economist, who said:

The December quarter GDP figures would have been weaker than they were without the government spending.

So there are a whole range of economists and a whole range of retailers saying the Economic Security Strategy worked. You had the opposition leader at one stage saying they supported it, that it would definitely provide a fiscal stimulus and that the opposition would not quibble about it. And what is he doing here today? Quibbling! He has changed his position yet again—yet again, at the behest of the member for Higgins, because it is the member for Higgins who is determining policy positions on the other side of the parliament. It is the member for Higgins who is the de facto leader of the opposition. That is the truth of the matter, and it is the opposition leader who is following the lead of the member for Higgins—the true Leader of the Opposition.

We hear the coalition talking about all the bad news of what has happened with jobs, and saying ‘Isn’t it terrible!’ You do not hear them talking about Woolworths, for example. Woolworths said, in a press release of 27 February, that it would create more than 7,000 jobs nationally in the second half of the financial year, while pointing out that the announcement follows the creation of 9,000 new jobs in the last half of the last financial year—that is a major retailer talking about the creation of jobs here in Australia. Aldi needs to hire 2,600 new employees. We have got Domino’s Pizza, who say they are on the hunt for 2,500 drivers. So let’s rejoice in some of the good news in otherwise challenging economic circumstances here in Australia, created by the financial crisis which descended into a global financial recession. This is the deepest recession—one described by the International Monetary Fund as long, deep and serious—and yet we have in Australia our retailers and our small businesses doing their very best against the wishes of the coalition, who just want to talk the place down. They say it is all about jobs. The truth is, it is only about their jobs.

I have here a list of small business organisations—and, mercifully, I will not go through all of them—who have supported the Nation Building and Jobs Plan and the Economic Security Strategy. Restaurant and Catering Industry Australia said:

The small business tax break, as part of that strategy, may be just what our small businesses need to convince them to buy that new piece of equipment in this market.

We just had the opposition leader saying that that tax break, worth $2.7 billion—a 30 per cent investment allowance—would not work because there is no cash flow. Wouldn’t you actually back the restaurant and catering people of Australia and not listen to the Leader of the Opposition? I would certainly back their views on this over those of the Leader of the Opposition. The Pharmacy Guild of Australia welcomes the tax break for small business that the Leader of the Opposition has just said here, again, that they think is a really bad idea. The National Farmers Federation describes the stimulus package as an ‘economic jump-start’—now there is a good rural analogy. But, no, not according to the Leader of the Opposition! We had the Master Builders Association Australia welcome the boost for the building industry. The New South Wales Business Chamber described it as ‘a shot in the arm for the New South Wales economy’. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia described it as a timely shot in the arm for small business. The Council of Small Business of Australia described it as a ‘confidence booster’ for small business. They are ringing endorsements of an Economic Security Strategy that is designed specifically to boost jobs and to protect jobs here in Australia, and all the evidence in relation to the Economic Security Strategy of late last year is that it has been very effective in its stated objectives.

It always worries me when you hear the coalition talking about superannuation. You see, the opposition leader’s position, reiterated here again today, is that what should happen instead is that the government should pay some of the superannuation contributions of workers for a period. He said, at the outset, that it should be about half. Let’s just try to understand what he is really saying. It was Labor who introduced superannuation coverage for the working people of this country—it was the coalition who opposed it with every breath in their bodies. And, when we start talking of policy options to boost employment and to boost the position of small business, what does the opposition leader target? Superannuation! They are true to form—the leopard never changes its spots. These superannuation payments are part of the wage settlement with the working people of Australia, and they want to go after the superannuation and say, ‘Well, we will give a temporary bonus or a payment in relation to that.’ But the truth is that this a very sneaky way of getting stuck into superannuation for working people, which they have always wanted to do. And let’s look at the cost of it—it would cost $20 billion.

The coalition have said, ‘We can’t have $200 billion debt. Under us’—the coalition—‘we will have $180 billion debt,’ because they said they would only have a fiscal stimulus package half the size of our $42 billion. But then they came up with this proposal, which is another $20 billion. You add that up and you get what? Two hundred billion dollars! It is the same position as ours. On the one hand they are saying: ‘Don’t do anything; sit and wait.’ Follow the advice of Professor John Taylor in the United States. Be the Dusty Springfield of Australian politics—sittin’ and a-hopin’ and a-wishin’ and a-prayin’. That is what they want. But on the other hand they are saying, ‘We’d have debt of $200 billion too.’ This is the pattern: he wants it each way; he occupies every possible position. An each-way better in a two-horse race—that is what Malcolm Turnbull is. That is what the Leader of the Opposition is: an each-way better in a two-horse race, so he can say later, ‘I picked the winner—I was for it, I was against it, I was for it, I was against it.’

There are plenty of examples of that. Even in relation to the very nature of the global financial crisis he said, ‘Kevin Rudd has hyped up this financial crisis.’ That was on 19 October last year. On 20 October, one day later, he said, ‘It is undoubtedly a very grave—the gravest—global financial crisis that we have seen since the Great Depression.’ Well, gee—something must have gone real bad overnight because the night before he said it was all hyped up by Kevin Rudd. The next day it is ‘the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression’. There he is, each-way betting so he can say he got it right.

Here we go again: the opposition leader said, ‘There is nobody that would have predicted these events a year ago, or even a few months ago,’ and then he said, just shortly after: ‘Regrettably, Mr Rudd’s government missed the warning signs at the beginning of the year.’ One day, no-one could have predicted it; next day—‘Oh, you missed the warning signs.’ He always occupies two positions on any issue.

Here we are today talking about jobs and, again, the coalition did not have it in them to bury Work Choices. I was on Sky News’s Agenda today with the shadow small business minister, and I said this: ‘Steve said earlier in the year that he would oppose any unfair dismissal laws for small businesses fully and totally and absolutely.’ Mr Ciobo said, ‘Craig is putting words into my mouth. I said nothing even remotely close to that.’ Well, let’s find out what he did say.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Keenan interjecting

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘Verballing’. Righto. This is a briefing to SmartCompany on 7 December 2007 and it says:

Ciobo says any attempt by Labor to cut down the 100 employee threshold for exemption from unfair dismissal laws will receive his “absolute and confirmed opposition”.

I reckon that is pretty absolute and pretty confirmed, and he says today: ‘I didn’t say anything like that. Craig Emerson’s putting words in my mouth.’

The truth is they never had the heart to bury Work Choices today because they were, they are and they always will be the party of Work Choices. By voting against the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the coalition voted for higher unemployment, and that is the hypocrisy of this MPI today. The coalition’s positions are being driven by the not-so-retiring opposition-leader-in-waiting, the member for Higgins—the bored member for Higgins. That is why he is doing so much media. Having to endure the sort of speech that that he had to endure here today, no wonder he is bored. The temporary Leader of the Opposition is attempting to shore up his shaky position by pretending to be all things to all people in the coalition party room. It will not work. He is an opportunist. (Time expired)

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We had the amazing spectacle in question time in this House today of a Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations who is about to change the industrial relations system in this country but is unable to guarantee that this system will not destroy jobs. Similarly, the Prime Minister was asked if he will be able to guarantee if his industrial relations changes—the new Fair Work Bill—will not destroy the livelihoods of thousands of Australians. There was no answer, no guarantee. The government just shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Oh well, there is a global financial crisis. It is not our problem. We don’t have anything to do with it. People are going to lose their jobs, but it is all happening overseas.’

The global financial crisis cannot be used as an alibi for every job loss that has occurred in Australia and that will occur once Labor makes its industrial relations changes. Every time the government makes an announcement about a new policy it is accompanied by a cash splash. Any stimulus package is accompanied by a figure of the number of jobs they believe that this new policy will create. Apparently it is very easy for Treasury to look at what the government is doing and decide how many jobs that particular policy is going to create.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Supports.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister at the table interjects ‘supports’, but of course they cannot decide whether it is ‘create’ or ‘support’. It used to be ‘create’; now it is ‘support’. Of course, when it comes to the re-regulation of the labour market contained within the Fair Work Bill, the government’s analysis of what that is going to do to the employment market is completely and utterly absent. Indeed, the Prime Minister exempted his minister from having to provide a regulatory analysis as is required under his own legislation. There is a reason for this: the government understands that their changes are going to cost Australians jobs.

The new Fair Work Bill has taken Labor’s pre-election commitments and turned them into a policy that first of all goes beyond those commitments and, secondly, massively expands union rights and discourages employers from creating jobs. I just want to deal with the minister’s pre-election commitments and what has turned up in the Fair Work Bill, because they are two very different things. The minister will stand in this chamber and swear black and blue that the Fair Work Bill is an accurate implementation of the Forward with Fairness policy. Of course that is complete and utter rubbish.

Let us look at union right of entry as perhaps the most grievous example. This is breached in the Fair Work Bill in two ways. Firstly, it allows union officials to have access to the records of non-union members and, secondly, it massively expands the rights of a union to enter a workplace for discussions. Prior to the election, the minister said on 28 August 2007:

We will make sure that current right of entry provisions stay. We understand that entering on the premises of an employer needs to happen in an orderly way. We will keep the right of entry provisions.

It cannot be clearer than that. On 28 May, after they won the election, the minister re-affirmed that: ‘We promise to retain the current right of entry framework and this promise will be kept.’

Within their own policy they explicitly said that there would be no changes to the existing right of entry provisions. In a speech to the Press Club on 7 November 2007—and this is without a doubt my personal favourite—the minister, when asked about proposed changes to the right of entry provisions, said, ‘If I could pledge to resign, if I could take a contract in blood, take a polygraph, give you my mother as a hostage—whatever you like—we will be delivering our policy as we outlined it.’ I am not sure where Ms Gillard Sr resides, but she should be awfully worried because her daughter has grievously breached the commitments that she gave to the people prior to the last election. Union right of entry has been massively expanded in both the areas that I have pointed out. The records of non-union members can be accessed by union officials if they suspect a breach within a workplace. This totally disregards the rights of privacy that employees should have in regard to their own personal information. Employee records are something that are specific to them. They may contain deeply personal information such as medical records or disciplinary action that might have been taken against them. Employees should have a say over whether a union official can access those records.

In regard to the right of entry, a second aspect is the massively expanded access of unions to workplaces. The government promised that under Labor there would be no changes. Yet what we see within the bill is that union officials can enter a workplace under a massively expanded range of circumstances. Similarly, there are changes in the area of compulsory arbitration—something that was explicitly ruled out by Labor in the lead-up to the last election. Indeed, their policy said exactly that: that there would be no compulsory arbitration under Labor’s fair work proposals. Let us just have a look at what the minister said. On 30 May 2007, in a speech to the Press Club, she said that it was ‘completely untrue that Labor’s Fair Work Australia will re-empower union bosses and reintroduce compulsory arbitration’. She went on to say that under Labor’s policy ‘there will be no automatic arbitration of collective agreements’. She continued this insistence beyond the election, right up until about three weeks before this policy was announced and then, lo and behold, we find within the bill compulsory arbitration. Of course, it is just by another name.

Other concerns for the coalition about this bill are about those areas where it will cost Australians jobs—for example, on greenfields agreements. These are the agreements that you make when you are starting a new project. Under the existing arrangements, you can go ahead and make those agreements and you are not required to notify anyone before you do so. Under the Fair Work Bill, you are required to notify every possible union who could represent an employee within that enterprise. So, if you think about the context of starting a mine in my home state of Western Australia, you might be required to notify the AMWU, the CFMEU and up to 10 separate unions or more. They are required to sign off on the employee arrangements before this new project can go ahead. If the workers in this new mine were covered, for instance, by the CFMEU, then in Western Australia you would need to go and get the agreement of Kevin Reynolds and Joe McDonald. They would need to sign off on those employee arrangements before that project could go ahead. If you were to look at that in the context of Victoria—let us say that you had a new building site and that you had electricians on that building site—you would then need to go to Dean Mighell and ask his permission before this new project could go ahead.

Similarly, the new provisions for transmission of business are blatantly anti jobs. Under the present arrangements, if a transmission of business occurs, the employment arrangements are required to be kept for 12 months afterwards. Under the new Fair Work Bill, those arrangements will need to be kept in perpetuity. They cannot possibly change under any circumstances. So if you were to go and purchase a business that is failing—it might be failing, for instance, because it has uncompetitive industrial arrangements—there would be nothing you could do to change that. So you would be faced with two options when you went into that business. You could accept that the existing arrangements were there and that they could not change—something that many businesses obviously would not be able to do if that business was underperforming—or alternatively you could just get rid of all the employees within that business. Why would you possibly do that within this climate? Why would you provide an incentive for employers to get rid of the workforce? Why would you blatantly have such an anti-jobs provision in the teeth of what are the most challenging economic circumstances that we have seen in this country for a generation?

I will move on to unfair dismissal, the sixth area in which the coalition has concerns about the government’s Fair Work Bill. I do not believe that anyone in the government understands what it is like to run a small business. I do not believe that they understand the pressures that small business people face. These changes to the unfair dismissal laws are a reflection of that. They do not understand how difficult it is for a small business to be called up and hauled before Fair Work Australia to have to answer for an unfair dismissal case. They do not understand that it is impossible for that business to find the time to do this, and that it certainly does not have the money to defend itself from these sorts of claims. So what will happen under the government’s new proposals is what has happened in the past: you will see go-away money because the small business does not have the capacity to defend itself from claims—some of which, of course, may be completely and utterly arbitrary.

This side of the House stands for jobs. The other side of the House has no understanding about what creates jobs. They have no understanding of what sustains jobs. That is very clear from the policies that they pursue—in particular, their changes to the industrial relations system. They have not shared with the Australian people the effect that those changes will have on employment. The minister and the Prime Minister cannot guarantee that it will not cost Australians jobs, and that is why we will move an amendment in the Senate to protect Australians from the spectre of unemployment.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September last year, we had crystallised the single biggest economic shock to the globe since the Second World War. It led the Leader of the Opposition to say that it was ‘undoubtedly a very grave, the gravest global financial crisis that we’ve seen since the Great Depression’. It was a very appropriate comment indeed. But then again it should not be surprising that the Leader of the Opposition would make such a comment, because the Leader of the Opposition has the unique capacity to make just about every comment possible on any issue with which he is confronted. In relation to the same phenomenon, he described it, I think, as ‘hype’. The Leader of the Opposition, a former barrister, absolutely knows how to argue a case and, if you give him an issue and you give him a few days, he will be able to argue every case possible in relation to it. He has the ability to defend and prosecute the same case within a matter of moments. But, on this occasion, the quote that he made in relation to the global economic crisis was perfectly correct.

The World Bank is now forecasting that the world will experience a shrinking in its economy for the first time since the Second World War. It is forecasting that world trade will record its biggest fall in 80 years. The Rudd government’s reaction to the global economic recession has been swift and decisive. In October last year we announced the $10.4 billion Economic Security Strategy package. In February this year we announced the $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan package. This represents a plan which sees this government not just ahead of the game here but ahead of the game internationally. Indeed, the way in which this government has been dealing with the economic crisis has seen Australia become a leading economy in the world, performing better than almost any other economy.

During this time, what have we seen from those in the opposition? You might have expected that, during this grave crisis confronting the Australian people, we would have seen some bipartisanship on the other side, but not a word of it. Instead, we have seen flip-flopping, vacillating and a frenzy of position-changing, which has led to a complete lack of activity. We have seen a total absence of any plan from their side of the House. We see this in relation to the various stimulus packages. The opposition supported the government’s Economic Security Strategy in October last year, but since then they have been busily talking it down at every opportunity. And, of course, they opposed the Nation Building and Jobs Plan this year.

We saw that same form play out in industrial relations. At the beginning of this term of government, their first term in opposition, we saw a bitter fight amongst their ranks as to whether or not they should be supporting our industrial relations plan. At the end of the day they decided to support what the government plans to put through this parliament. But in the last few days we have seen them saying that they will move significant amendments to the government’s industrial relations legislation. So where that leaves them in relation to the whole package is anybody’s guess. Whilst there may appear to be confusion on the outside, we should be under no illusion that underneath, on the heart of every member on the opposition benches, you will find tattooed two words: Work Choices. There is absolutely no doubt what they believe in. The only question is how prepared they will be to publicly say that in the debates which ensue in the coming weeks.

We see the same thing in relation to climate change. Their benches are littered with climate change deniers, but the Leader of the Opposition has been a supporter of an emissions trading scheme. Then again, since the announcement of the white paper they have been busily running from electorate to electorate all over Australia saying we should not have an emissions trading scheme yet—but the Leader of the Opposition says we should have a target to reduce greenhouse gases by 25 per cent by 2020. So their position on climate change is, again, anybody’s guess. From alcopops to whether or not this government ought to run a deficit in the next budget in the current economic climate, we see the opposition going from one place to another in terms of what they think they should do.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the way in which the opposition run things is with the spin-the-wheel school of public policy. I am sure if you go to the Leader of the Opposition’s office you will find one of those big wheels that you see on Wheel of Fortune. Every morning the Leader of the Opposition spins it. Whatever public policy line comes up, that is what he does on that day. Then the next morning he walks in and spins it again, and a different line comes up and that is what he says. Yet the apparent randomness of their position actually belies an underlying commitment and a steadfast direction which I will actually concede exists on their part.

If you want to draw a line in the opposition’s behaviour then look to the political opportunity. If you want to understand what they are about, do not ask about the public policy or what is good for the country, but ask about the politics of the situation and what is good for the Liberal Party. The Leader of the Opposition will sniff out a political opportunity, a media grab, a quick political point here or a cheap shot there. He will sniff all of that out with the focus of a truffle pig. All the while, public policy becomes completely incidental to what they are doing. In voting against the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the opposition actually voted against jobs. By contrast, the Rudd government in this crisis has come up with a plan which is entirely focused on jobs, and we heard from the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy about what we are doing.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Name one job.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will do that. In the electorate that I represent, in Geelong, we have a very large car industry. Through the $6.2 billion car industry plan we have seen an enormous change in the way in which the car industry in this country operates. Of that money, $1.3 billion is going to the Green Car Innovation Fund and $3.4 billion is going to a greener and better targeted Automotive Transformation Scheme. The plan led to an extraordinary announcement by Ford, one that I am sure the member for Moncrieff will be interested in. In July-August of 2007, after 11 to 12 long years of the Howard government, when the car industry was completely demoralised, we saw a decision made by Ford to close the engine plant in Geelong, with the consequent loss of hundreds of jobs. It was a decision which absolutely rocked our city. Yet within just a few days of this government announcing its car industry plan, within just a few days of Ford realising that they have a government which is willing to work with them, to have an activist industry policy and to invest in the industry they work in—and listen for it, because this is where it comes—Ford reversed their decision. They reversed their decision with a consequent saving of 1,300 jobs in my electorate: 400 direct and 900 indirect jobs which would have been lost if that engine plant had closed. I know those people. That is the result of an activist industry policy and a government which cares about jobs and changing people’s lives.

Doesn’t that stand in stark contrast to the way in which the Howard government, the now opposition, ran industry policy over those 11 or 12 years where we did not see any industry policy to speak of? All we saw was flat-earth economics which went a long way towards creating an industrial desert in this country. It has been sprinkled with random acts of stupidity, such as those of Senator Michael Ronaldson, the Liberal duty senator for the area where I live, when he said that what the government ought to do is have only hybrid cars in its fleet. Forget the fact that we do not make hybrid cars in this country yet. That is a comment which, if acted upon, would mean that the government would not buy a single Australian made vehicle at all. How that would go in helping jobs in Geelong, how that would go in helping jobs in Australia, is anybody’s guess.

The Rudd government has a plan. The Rudd government, through the Economic Security Strategy and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, has been investing in this economy in a way which sees jobs being created. The Rudd government has a plan for creating jobs in this country. It stands in stark contrast to the rolling circus of garbled quotes without any direction whatsoever which characterises the way in which the opposition has gone about its business in opposition. The Rudd government cares about jobs and it votes for them. The opposition cares about political opportunity, and that has only led it, at the end of the day, to vote against jobs. (Time expired)

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, the member for Stirling. I came in during a fatuous presentation from the government side. It is interesting that the government member talked about flat-earth economics. I will put one to him from his own lexicon. Let me ask you this: you proposed to spend $550 million on local projects for councils and they have to be finished by 30 September this year; so, pray tell, as you have not yet told the councils, which ones are being approved—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hinkler will refer to the member by his seat. Otherwise, you are asking the Deputy Speaker, and I will not give you an answer.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask those many members through you, Mr Deputy Speaker: how are we going to finish all those projects by 30 September this year? Now that is flat-earth economics.

Government Member:

A government member interjecting—

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, not many councils in my area know much about it. I come from the Wide Bay statistical region, which is made up of the electorates of Hinkler and Wide Bay. I take some pride in having worked on a lot of projects that got unemployment down in my area in the time I have been the member, especially under the Howard government. When we came to power, one month after we actually came into the parliament with the removal of the Keating government, unemployment in my area was 8.3 per cent. In the month before the Rudd government took office—you will recall they did not sit over the Christmas-New Year period; they sat in February—unemployment was sitting at 3.9 per cent. But it is moving up: 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.5 again and 4.8 in the last five months.

My Centrelink figures are interesting too. They came down to nearly one-third of what they were under Labor. The figure was 6,000 under Labor, down to 2,300 in the time that I was a member of the Howard government. But, since Labor came to power, the figure of 2,300 has now gone up to 2,800 on the Centrelink lists, and in Hervey Bay, the other part of my electorate, it has gone from 1,000 to 1,400. In the face of those sorts of figures, how you can honestly look this parliament in the face and say, ‘We have created 75,000 jobs with our first package and we’ve consolidated 90,000 with the second,’ is totally and utterly bewildering.

But let us move on to some other features of the package. The sum of $12.4 billion to primary and special schools for libraries and assembly areas is quite a commendable objective, as are the $1 billion for science labs and language centres and the $1.3 billion for maintenance, up to $200,000 per school. Have you really sat down and looked at how you are going to do that? You will find that, if you analyse this, in the school package you are going to have to build 20 buildings or major renovations per day—not per week or per month but per day—and over 2½ years you will have no chance. Let me say this to you: the fact that it has got to the point where you have to bail out the state Labor governments says it is the most appalling demonstration of their utter failure to look after the kids in state schools across this country.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Give them a flagpole!

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, indeed. But this is also very interesting.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don’t give them classrooms!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Member for Moreton!

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is okay, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will decide whether it is okay, member for Hinkler.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I like to be generous in spirit! If you are going to filter it through the state bureaucracies, I will tell you to get ready for two things. The first one is that it will go through the state bureaucracies, the works departments and agencies like QBuild and you will be in for a very long wait. There is another thing: there will be steep administrative costs, if not a massive cost shift. Those are the things you are looking at. If we want jobs, we are going to have to do better than some of the things Labor has put up in this package. Even with regard to the level crossings, there will be only 200 level crossings out of how many? Nine thousand, four hundred— (Time expired)

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the contributions from the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy and the member for Corio in this very important debate on a matter of public importance today, which has been raised by the Leader of the Opposition. Sometimes you come into this place and really start to wonder where the opposition is with regard to the global financial crisis. More than 30 banks have collapsed or have been bailed out. Major economies like the USA, the UK, Germany and France have all fallen into recession. Unemployment is set to rise in practically every country around the world. Six out of 10 of our trading partners are now in recession. Growth in China and Japan, two of our largest markets for exports, has slowed dramatically. In December China had its slowest growth in seven years and Japan had its largest contraction since the 1974 oil shock. But we continually come in here and find that it is as if the opposition is in denial as to what is actually occurring around the world.

What we as a government had to do was to take action. We took action to cushion Australia against the full impact of this global recession. The government has been early and decisive, and it has been proven, because we have not had the same effect as a lot of other countries have experienced; we are in front of the game. Unfortunately, we have had to take out a deficit in doing so, but we are in front of the game and we are better situated than a lot of other countries. It was done by guaranteeing bank deposits in order to shore up our own financial institutions and by setting up the Australian Business Investment Partnership.

It was necessary to stimulate the economy, and we did that by putting money into the economy in December, which was welcomed in my electorate of Solomon. I have spoken to small business owners in Solomon who have said that they were able to keep staff on through December and January, when they usually might have had to put staff off; that there was demand in the economy; and that it was working. People were very grateful for that. We increased the first home owners grant, and that has enabled companies to stimulate work, because young people are now able to get into the market, something that was not happening under the previous government. Retail trade rose 3.8 per cent in December, so there were things that were measurable and that rose due to that stimulus package.

So why did we come in here today on this very important issue? It is mind blowing. ‘The failure of the government to position the Australian economy for job creation’ is what was said. I look forward to reading the papers over the next few days to find out what really happened in that party room to the Leader of the Opposition today, because what happened was that the member for Stirling and the Leader of the Opposition came in here and straightaway went on to bashing unions. That is what they do. That is in their DNA, as the Prime Minister says; it is about bashing unions. It is the only way that the Leader of the Opposition could save face today, because once again he has been rolled by the member for Higgins in the party room. I think the Leader of the Opposition is a pretty decent bloke. He has some good things on climate change, but they rolled him on that. Now they have done him over once again on Work Choices, because they really believe in Work Choices. He wants to strike Work Choices away; the member for Higgins and the old guard have done him over once again today in the party room. The only way that he could try to save face with those members was to come into this place today on this MPI and not talk about jobs; it was about getting into the unions and union bashing—scaremongering once again to the Australian public about unions coming into workplaces. Modern unions work well with modern business.

It is amazing that he would use this. People like Saul Eslake say that the December quarter GDP figures would have been weaker without the government spending. There are people who support our package. There are people who believe in that package. The Leader of the Opposition just walks both sides of the street on this: one day he will say one thing and the next day he will do another. He just makes it up as he goes along. It is clear to everyone that the only job that the Leader of the Opposition really wants to support and save is his own job. He does not care about the Australian public at all. (Time expired)

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! This discussion has concluded.