Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have 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 Government’s failure to manage the economy to prevent job losses.

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

For the past seven weeks the opposition has been trying to get a straight answer out of the Prime Minister on the subject of jobs. We have asked question after question on the effect of his policies on jobs, and all we get is blather, waffle and words, words, words—most of them referring to redundancy. That seems to be his fixation. I can give just one example. On Thursday, 12 March the shadow Treasurer, the member for North Sydney, asked the Prime Minister about the impact, the jobs consequences, of the so-called stimulus packages. The Prime Minister’s answer was:

One of the things that working families are interested in right now is the protection of their redundancy arrangements.

One of the things working families are interested in the most is remaining working families. The Prime Minister seems to be determined to make them redundancy families. He has so incompetently assembled his economic policies that he is deliberately putting Australians out of work at a time when we face real economic challenges. When we need a government that supports the economy, supporting employment, he is putting Australians out of work.

Yesterday we raised with him the very concrete example of Xstrata, one of Australia’s largest mining companies. It has said that, if the Rudd emissions trading scheme is enacted into law, it will close three or four mines, approximately 1,000 jobs will be lost right now, future investment of up to $7 billion will be cancelled and 4,000 future jobs will no longer be established. That is the evidence from Xstrata, one of the largest mining companies in the world, one of the largest employers in the mining industry in Australia. We put this to the Prime Minister and he waffled as usual. Words, words, words—endless words but no understanding of his own scheme. What he said was that Xstrata would be compensated as an emissions-intensive trade-exposed sector. But, in fact, the coal mining industry has been left out; instead, they have to scrabble for a bit of random compensation out of a fund. They are not going to be given free permits, as other elements in the emissions-intensive trade-exposed sector will be.

So we have the Prime Minister with an emissions trading scheme which is going to put Australians out of work—we have the word of this large employer saying the Prime Minister’s policy will put thousands of Australians out of work. We raise it with him in the parliament, and he does not even understand his own scheme. He cannot even explain the consequences of his own scheme. He does not know the damage he is doing, because he does not understand the scheme he is demanding that everybody sign up to. It is bad enough asking us to sign up to it sight unseen, but it is sight unseen by him too. Who has read it? Senator Wong, perhaps—nobody else, that is for sure.

Today, we raised another concrete example—a company called Envirogen, which is in the business of creating renewable energy from the burning of waste coalmine gas. At the moment, it gets compensation under the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. Under that scheme, it gets financial incentives in the form of NGACs. That scheme will come to an end with the beginning of the Rudd emissions trading scheme, but, as Envirogen writes to us:

The CPRS, as proposed … does not reward generation initiatives for waste coal mine gas. Therefore, the coal mines will move to reduce their permit cost by flaring the waste gas—

in other words, by creating more emissions. They go on:

This is the least cost option from the coal mines perspective and consequently, the coal mines will not share the savings in permit costs beyond the value of flaring.

What is going to happen? More emissions, a current investment of $455 million and a hundred jobs at risk as well as new investment of $345 million and more than 300 new jobs at risk. There is a concrete case—a practical example—of the problems of a poorly designed emissions trading scheme.

I asked the Prime Minister about this in question time today, and all he could offer us was a meaningless, rambling lecture on consistency. Indeed, consistency is a major problem—he has as much difficulty with being consistent as he does with being relevant. Let us not forget that this is a man who said, when he was trying to get elected—and successfully getting elected in 2007—that he was an economic conservative. On the other hand, when he was trying to become leader of the Labor Party, he said he was an old-fashioned Christian socialist. And then, at the end of 2006, shortly after he had become leader of the Labor Party, he said to the Agewhich announced this almost in mourning and almost with a black border around the front page—‘I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist.’ The readers were obviously very upset to read that! Now, of course, he has got a new guise. The Christian socialist who then ceased to be a socialist and became an economic conservative to get elected has now become a social democrat, based on his latest essay in the Monthly magazine!

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is a chameleon on steroids!

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

One of my colleagues here describes him as a chameleon. That is very unfair, and I am disappointed. It is very unfair to chameleons—chameleons are only one colour at a time! The Prime Minister seems to adopt every political colour simultaneously. He is a highly evolved form of chameleon, if a chameleon he is at all! But he claims to be a social democrat, and, of course, the question is: ‘What is a social democrat?’ We all know that the difference between social democrats and other democrats is that social democrats are socialists. One of the Prime Minister’s fellow social democrats—one of his brethren in the international assault on neoliberalism—is, of course, Hugo Chavez. He is a very distinguished political leader, and the Prime Minister has obviously modelled himself on him. I just note that, not so long ago, Hugo Chavez was asked by journalists about the differences between him and Fidel Castro. Hugo Chavez said: ‘Fidel is a Communist. I am not. I am a social democrat.’ The time has come for the Prime Minister to rule out being a communist, but it was probably only a matter of time. He will have a go at that at some stage!

We have seen, over the last two months, labour force figures where the number of Australians without jobs has risen by 83,000. The unemployment rate has risen from 4½ per cent to 5.2 per cent—the highest in four years. And, I might say, youth unemployment is at its highest since 2001. We have seen a sharp contraction in GDP of one-half of one per cent during the December quarter. That has left Australia on the brink, at risk of a Rudd recession. We have seen evidence from one company after another, and I have cited just two today, that the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme is going to cost them jobs. They are addicted to this emissions trading scheme as a matter of ideology. The reality is that there is no virtue in an emissions trading scheme per se—it has to be well designed. You can have a well-designed emissions trading scheme which does not cost jobs or you can have a badly designed one, such as the one the Prime Minister is proposing to foist on Australia.

The fact of the matter is that so many jobs in Australia depend on industries which are emissions intensive and whose competitors are in countries which are unlikely, for the foreseeable future, to put a carbon cost on their emissions-intensive industries. If you take the export of thermal coal, for example, the largest exporter of thermal coal nowadays—it was not always so—is Indonesia. If, as a result of the Prime Minister’s emissions trading scheme, we export 100 million tonnes less thermal coal, Indonesia will just export 100 million tonnes more. Thousands of jobs are lost in Australia, and there is absolutely no benefit to the environment. That is why we have always opposed the Rudd government emissions trading scheme. We have always opposed it because it is bad for jobs and bad for the environment, whereas the scheme we proposed several years ago was protective of emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries, recognising that economic reality.

Of course, this lack of competence in economic management is inherent in the Rudd government. We saw at the very outset of their government the way in which they talked up inflation for purely political purposes. They talked up inflation and talked up interest rates. That was the great challenge. We used to get lectures from the Assistant Treasurer all the time about the evils of inflation, and we were described as economic idiots because we dared to suggest that there was a global credit crisis and there might be more than enough tightening and contraction coming from the international credit squeeze. It turned out that we were right on that point—very right, as it turned out—and the Australian businesses that suffered from interest rates being too high for too long should blame the Rudd government for the way in which they talked up inflation.

Then, of course, we saw the extraordinary bungle of the unlimited bank deposit guarantee. How much damage has this done? This, of course, is part of the reason why the government are now rushing to establish Ruddbank. They have dislocated the financial markets without any precedent. There is no comparable country in the world with a strong, well-regulated financial sector—courtesy of the coalition in government, I might add—that has done so. There is no precedent of a country like Australia going for an unlimited bank deposit guarantee. Why would the country with the most secure banking system go for the most unlimited, extensive and comprehensive bank deposit guarantee? For a political headline. It is all politics and no economics. That was the Prime Minister’s objective. And what have we seen? The finance companies that underwrite the motor vehicle industry and equipment sales cannot raise money. Cash management trusts cannot raise money. Mortgage trusts cannot raise money. A quarter of a million Australians’ savings have been frozen. Now we see, as the government rush to try to patch up the damage they have done, that they have come up with this misconceived Ruddbank, probably the most misconceived exercise that the government have put forward to date. I will speak about that in speaking on the bill in a moment.

The government was left the strongest hand of economic cards it could possibly ask for. It was left with a national government with no debt, with cash in the bank and with a Future Fund that was established to take the burden of the previously unfunded liabilities to public sector pensioners off the shoulders of future generations. It was left with strong surpluses. It was literally the envy of the world, described by the Economist magazine as the ‘wonder down under’. That strong economic management had created jobs—2.2 million jobs—and, when we left office, the lowest unemployment rate for a generation. We pursued those policies that create jobs because we are passionate about employment. We recognise that the best form of social welfare is employment, to give everybody the chance of a job and to make it possible for Australians to live their lives as they wish, because we believe passionately that the job of government is to create and foster the economic environment where Australians can do their best. We now have a government led by a social democrat Christian socialist who, in his own words, wants to put the state at the centre of the economy. He wants to put an activist state at the centre of the economy. He really is a worthy companion of Mr Chavez.

Our opponents pretend to have compassion for the unemployed, but at the same time they are legislating for unemployment. They are, in fact, the party of unemployment. In 1996 the coalition inherited an unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent from the Keating Labor government. It took us a decade to lower it, just as it took us a decade to pay off their debt. Increasingly it looks, tragically, as though history will repeat itself under the Rudd Labor government. It is delivering us the classic old Labor trifecta, that terrible trifecta of more unemployment; more debt that will burden generations to come with higher taxes and higher interest rates; and, as we saw last week, more strikes. We cannot afford a government that is so careless about the economy and so ready, in pursuit of its own ideology, to send thousands and thousands of Australians onto the dole queues.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition has a very interesting two-part approach to the pressures that the global financial crisis is placing on employment in Australia. Firstly, he never misses an opportunity to oppose a government measure to support jobs. The Leader of the Opposition has opposed every measure the government has taken to keep employment robust in Australia. The second part of his strategy is then to criticise the government for not doing enough. The opposition oppose every measure we take and then criticise us for not doing enough. Consistency and internal logic have not been very high on the Leader of the Opposition’s agenda of late—we know that—but this MPI is a bit rich, even coming from him. One commentator recently said that he was not particularly concerned if the Leader of the Opposition is not consistent all the time as long as he is right occasionally, but not even that was the case. I would like to see some consistency as well as the Leader of the Opposition being right, but we have not seen that either of late.

Let us have a look at the three major things that the government has done to support jobs and keep employment as robust as it can be in these very difficult times. First, there is the Economic Security Strategy, the first stimulus package, announced by the government last October. In the interests of fairness, the opposition did support that, even though they now oppose it. They voted for it at the time, even though they now take every opportunity to distance themselves from it. They call it a cash splash. They call it a sugar hit. That is not what they said to Australia’s pensioners and families at the time. That is not what they said when the Australian people were focused on those payments. I think the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues are hoping that the Australian people do not realise that he has actually reneged on his support of that package. I think he is hoping that the recipients of the bonus payments and the payments to families do not know that he has walked away from supporting them in these difficult times. But the opposition’s original support was well placed. It has played a key role in supporting jobs. Retail trade in Australia in December increased by 3.8 per cent. In Canada it fell by 5.4 per cent. In the US it fell 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.

The Leader of the Opposition has another very interesting little theory that retail trade has nothing to do with jobs and that increase in retail trade has no impact on employment. Usually in economic debates you can find some economist somewhere to support your theories. You can find some economist in the world to lean on for support for your theories. But the Leader of the Opposition will not find one to support his theory on this particular matter. I do not think he could find one economist who would support such an outlandish theory. On the contrary, economists have pointed out that the government’s stimulus package on retail trade has had a real impact on jobs. Tony Meer from Deutsche Bank said:

Retailers … bolstered by the cash-bonus-inspired strength in sales … have responded in January by retaining higher than usual post-Christmas staff levels.

The Age reported that ANZ senior economist Katie Dean believes that the government’s stimulus package has worked in retaining jobs in January, in tandem with aggressive rate cuts. Perhaps most importantly of all, Dr Gruen from the Australian Treasury said:

… we have evidence that the package stimulated consumption. We have … reason to believe that that would have led to more people being employed than would otherwise have been the case.

So the Leader of the Opposition now walks away from that package, which unquestionably, undoubtedly, has supported jobs in Australia.

The ESS was also about putting a floor under confidence in the housing construction sector, which is so important to the employment of so many thousands of Australians. What effect has it had? Almost 30,000 first home buyers had entered the property market by the end of January, using the first home owners grant. The number of first home owners taking out housing loans has increased by 21.3 per cent, pushing their share of new loans to a quarter, which is the highest level since December 2001. Considering the economic situation in Australia and around the world, I think these are pretty extraordinary figures, showing the impact of the government’s Economic Security Strategy.

Then we come to the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the second government stimulus package. In this case at least the opposition have been more consistent. They opposed it all the way, to the death knell. They opposed it in early morning votes, in late night votes and, as I recall, even at the third reading stage, which is quite unusual. They opposed it in the other House. They opposed it right to the very end. They opposed our efforts to support Australian jobs. Now they criticise us for not doing enough. What did they say? What was their great strategy? Why didn’t they support it? Because they were going to wait and see. They were going to wait and see what the Australian economy did. The former shadow Treasurer, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, said their strategy was to wait and see. The new shadow Treasurer has said as much in as many words. He said: ‘They have spent too much fuel. They should leave some in the tank. They are doing too much too soon. We have racked up too much debt.’ Bear in mind that, at the end of the forward estimates of this budget process, Australian government debt will be one-tenth of the OECD average. They do not care about jobs. Their debt argument is a straw man. They come in here and cry crocodile tears about the unemployed while opposing packages to support jobs in Australia. What a load of hypocrites! They oppose packages to support jobs then come in here and complain that we are not doing enough.

The impact of this package is only just starting to be felt. It will take some time to flow through to the Australian economy, as you would expect. Most of the payments have not yet even been made. But we have seen some early, encouraging indications of some impact, with retailers reporting increased sales last week as the first of the payments were made to families. The payments to families were just one part of the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. There was support for both big and, particularly, small business. There was $2.7 billion in enhanced depreciation for investment, with particular flexibility when it comes to small business. The Council of Small Business of Australia, COSBOA, said this: ‘The worst thing we can do is not do anything. I think half-hearted action is not required as well. We want somebody to get out there and do something big, and this is big.’

That is support from the small business sector for the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. They are saying, ‘Don’t wait and see, don’t have half measures and don’t sit and watch the world pass you by as unemployment washes through Australia—get out there and do something.’ That is what the government have done, because we do not think the opposition’s approach is sustainable or sensible.

We come to the third matter, which will be before the House in just a little while: the Australian Business Investment Partnership. I was interested to hear the Leader of the Opposition say that this is the most misconceived policy measure the Rudd government has embarked upon. That just shows how little he cares about Australian jobs. Anyone who had been in contact late last year and early this year with the business community, big or small, would know that one of the major concerns for business around the boardrooms of Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere was the potential for foreign banks to withdraw from the Australian market in whole or in part. Anybody in contact with the Australian business community would know that. And it remains a very understandable concern. Several overseas banks have been nationalised, and their new owners are requiring them to focus on their home markets. We are already seeing evidence of foreign banks withdrawing to their home markets. I am aware of one nation in which the prudential regulation authority has changed the rules to favour domestic lending over foreign lending when it comes to capital adequacy requirements—really putting the pressure on foreign banks to stay in their home markets, something which will have a devastating impact on the Australian economy and Australian jobs.

The Leader of the Opposition again would have us think that this somehow is all about supporting the banks and not about supporting jobs. Perhaps in the forlorn hope of distancing himself from his former career, he tries to pour buckets over the banks and buckets over the government, when this is all about supporting Australian jobs. It is not just the government who says this. The Master Builders Association says: ‘The government has acted. It has acted in a timely way. We have to focus on what is the immediate problem, which is the lack of finance flows in this industry, and without that finance we will see job losses.’

This is the package that the opposition opposes. Aaron Gadiel from the Urban Taskforce said:

Without action we would lose valuable jobs, income and development that our community desperately needs. For every $1 million spent on construction, 27 jobs are created.

We have a scheme which is designed to support Australian jobs, to stop the impact of the global financial crisis, to stop the withdrawal of foreign funding impacting on Australian employment and to save Australians from being thrown on the dole queue, and the opposition says that it is the most misconceived policy that we have come up with. That is commitment to employment for you, that is commitment to Australian workers for you and that is commitment to Australian jobs for you from this Leader of the Opposition, who behaves inconsistently at every opportunity.

The Leader of the Opposition raises carbon trading and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, saying that he does not support the introduction of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme even though, when in government, it was his policy to do so. Even though their shadow minister for the environment criticised our package as being too similar to theirs at the time, those opposite now say that they do not support emissions trading because it will affect jobs. They completely ignore the Treasury modelling which says that if you delay action you will cost jobs, that if you put action off on the never-never you will be throwing Australians onto the unemployment heap as we try to catch up and that, as the rest of the world moves—and we have seen President Obama moving in recent weeks towards carbon trading—if we leave it too late we will be throwing Australians on the unemployment heap. And the Leader of the Opposition is all for it. The Leader of the Opposition ignores the Treasury modelling.

The opposition would have us believe that there is a choice between the environment and jobs. We do not think there is a choice; we think that is a lazy approach. We think you can make a contribution to tackling climate change in the world and you can support Australian jobs at the same time. We think you can support alternative energy. We think you can embrace the methodology of the CSIRO, which says that up to 350,000 jobs in the alternative energy sector can be created as you embrace carbon trading. The opposition oppose it for cheap political purposes and the Leader of the Opposition opposes it to save his own job. That is the real agenda that he has. Every time the opposition have been tested, they have opposed jobs. Every time they have been tested, they have argued that we should wait and see. Every time they have been tested, they have said we should do less to support Australian workers. Every time they have been tested, they have failed when it comes to Australian jobs. Every time they have been tested, they have said that the Australian government is doing too much and we should do less. Is it any wonder that the Leader of the Opposition’s position is under such threat when he engages in these sorts of politics; when he engages in sophistry about employment, which is so important to so many millions of Australians; when he comes in here and opposes, to the death knell—through all-night sittings and early morning votes—measures which have at their very fibre, at their core, the protection and support of Australian employment. No wonder the Leader of the Liberal Party is under such pressure, because his hypocrisy has been exposed.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians have now for a decade felt secure in their jobs. They have been able to plan for the future with confidence. They have had the assurance of a strong economy to underpin their workplace. Yet, one year and a little more into Labor, all that has changed. The economy has moved quickly into retreat. Thousands of Australians have already lost their jobs and many look at the prospects for their career with nothing but doom and gloom. Yet Labor plan to introduce a range of new policy measures which they know will have a massive impact on jobs in this country. They plan to implement an emissions trading scheme—the harshest emissions trading scheme on jobs in the world; the harshest scheme that any government anywhere has attempted to impose upon its industrial sector, its productive sector. That is what Labor have in store for Australia, and on top of all that is industrial relations reform that they know will cost jobs across the nation.

Labor have never authorised any study into their new industrial relations scheme and the impact it will have on jobs. They have never authorised a study of the proposed emissions trading scheme and the effect it might have on jobs. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics tried to have one, but the government stopped them from completing it. They do not want the public to know about the job impacts of the schemes that they are proposing because, whatever they may say in their relentless spin about jobs being the priority of the government, the people know that the government do not care about jobs; they do not care about the people whose jobs are being lost as a result of the government’s deliberate actions—their deliberate policy.

Yesterday in question time we asked the Prime Minister repeatedly what he had to say to the families who will be made redundant. All he could respond with was to say, ‘Well, we’ll make sure they get their redundancy payment.’ These people do not want a redundancy payment; they want their jobs. They do not want to trade in their jobs—their longstanding careers—for a redundancy payment. All the government can offer them is a redundancy payment. That is not a satisfactory answer to the people who are being thrown out of work as a result of the deliberate policies of this government. Today, when we again pressed the question, the answer had changed a bit. It was: ‘You need to have consistency.’ I do not think those people whose jobs are being sacrificed on the altar of consistency are going to feel very comfortable about the Prime Minister’s response that so long as you are consistent, and you keep consistently throwing people out of jobs, somehow or other you are absolved from responsibility. Under this government, 300,000 jobs are already on the way out. That is a scandal of monumental proportions.

The government has already proven that it cannot manage an economy and it is going to try to do even more. Its emissions trading scheme has as few friends as had Charles Manson. No-one is left there backing it because those who believed it was going to deliver green outcomes are disillusioned. They know it will fail. Those who have to bear the cost of this scheme—$13 billion in the first year and going up every year from then on—know that it is going to cost jobs. It is high time that the government stopped hid-ing the truth when people’s jobs are at risk.

When I was in Gippsland during the Gippsland by-election, I was impressed by the fact that the owners and operators of the power stations in that area had levelled with their workers about the impact of the ETS on their jobs. The unions had levelled with the workers. The unions were kept informed. I spent half a day with a union official on the polling booth, and he spent that time expressing his concerns to me about the emissions trading scheme and its impact on the Gippsland community. And, of course, the coal workers of Gippsland responded in the only way they could—they rejected Labor in droves in those coalmining towns because they understood what the emissions trading scheme was going to mean to their jobs.

It is high time that the unions and employers in other parts of Australia levelled with their workers about their prospects under the emissions trading scheme. What will be the impact on cities like Gladstone and Mount Isa in Queensland, La Trobe in Gippsland in Victoria and regions like the Hunter and the Illawarra in New South Wales as a result of the emissions trading scheme? The New South Wales government has done some modelling, although it has not been prepared to release it. The person who did that modelling, Mr Danny Price of Frontier Economics, said the impact would be ‘very high’ and ‘very severe’. He said:

In those regions, the effect on regional GDP would be many, many times more than the national effect forecast by the Treasury …

So somebody who has done some modelling says the impact is going to be very severe. I congratulate the mayors of Gladstone, Newcastle and Mount Isa, who today were prepared to go public on what they know will be the impact on their cities—the lost jobs, with the closures of coalmines and alumina refineries, and the new developments they had hoped for that will not happen. In a city like Gladstone, for every job lost because of the close-down of the coalmining industry or the alumina refinery, there will be eight or 10 lost in the city. The impact of this emissions trading scheme will be absolutely catastrophic for these people.

I think it is high time the member for Flynn levelled with the coal workers in his electorate about how many of them are going to lose their jobs. Their bosses already know that their mines cannot survive Labor’s emissions trading scheme. It is time that the member for Capricornia told the truth to the coalminers in her electorate about how many of them are going to lose their jobs. It is high time the member for Dawson told the people of Mackay how many jobs will be lost in the mine-servicing industry as a result of the emissions trading scheme. They cannot remain silent; they must tell the truth about the thousands of jobs that will be lost in that sector. The mining industry’s latest estimate is that at least 10,000 jobs in the front line of the coal industry alone will be lost as a result of Labor’s scheme. Members of parliament who represent those people must stand up and be counted.

But it is not just the coalminers. It is not just those people in heavy industry. If you have a food-processing industry in your electorate, you can also expect to see hundreds of jobs lost. Labor’s scheme is not going to exempt the food-processing sector from the ETS. New Zealand and most—I think all—of the other countries in the world with ETSs have exempted food processing. Australia is not going to do that. Why would anyone process dairy products in Australia when, if they did it in New Zealand, Europe or other places, they would not have to buy permits? The reality is that there will be jobs lost across the dairy sector in Australia in particular because of this ETS. Not only will farmers pay; their processors will also pay under Labor’s ETS. Has the Treasurer gone to the workers of Golden Circle in Brisbane—and there are 1,000 of them—and levelled with them about how many of their jobs will be lost as a result of his emissions trading scheme? They use energy, so permits will be required, which will make their jobs less viable.

It is not just in those sorts of manufacturing and industrial sectors that these issues arise. We learn today about Envirogen. That is a green company, a company that is actively involved in promoting green energy. They will lose 100 jobs as a result of Labor’s ETS, and 300 jobs that were on the drawing board will not eventuate. Labor talks about jobs but it does not deliver. When we were in government, between 1996 and 2007, 2.2 million Australians found jobs. Already, 300,000 of those have gone and Labor has plans to take many more of them away. All the hard work and all the progress is being eroded—and so quickly—by this Labor government.

The latest person to jump on Labor’s jobs bandwagon is Queensland Premier Anna Bligh. In a desperate bid to save her own job, she said Labor would create 100,000 new jobs hand in hand with Prime Minister Rudd. But the reality is that this is the woman who is leaving behind a $74 billion debt. She was warned last year, when the debt was $65 billion, that Queensland would lose its credit rating but she kept on spending like a spendaholic. The ALP’s stimulus package cost $10 billion and was supposed to create 75,000 jobs. It did not create any. It was not even claimed that the $42 billion package would create any new jobs; it was just going to save 90,000. How much is it going to cost Anna Bligh to create 100,000 new jobs, when Labor cannot create any with $52 billion? The reality is that Labor has lost its way on jobs, and there are going to be a lot more jobs lost in Queensland if the emissions trading scheme and the industrial relations policies of this government are put into place. Anna Bligh must level with the Queensland people about the jobs— (Time expired)

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are a curious coalition opposite. They are not the Liberal Party and the National Party; they are Friedmanite fundamentalists and climate change deniers. We had a rant from the member for Wide Bay. He spent the whole time talking about the ETS. He did not talk about the policy of his own leader and his own political party—whatever they call themselves in Queensland; I think it is the LNP these days. Guess what his policy is? His policy is to actually cut jobs, to cut 12,000 a year. His policy is to cut 12,000 jobs a year from the Queensland Public Service and to gut $1 billion from the state budget. Guess what will happen then? Services, health and education will be cut back. Guess what will happen then? There will be job losses in the Public Service. The coalition claim that their policy is to support jobs. It is not; it is actually to cut jobs. Labor’s policy in Queensland—and Anna Bligh has taken this to the people—is jobs, not cuts. That is what our policy is: to support jobs. Those opposite are supporting cuts. That is what their policy is. Labor’s policy in Queensland is 100,000 new jobs in three years. We have a target. Under Premier Beattie we achieved our target of reducing the unemployment rate to five per cent. I have every confidence that Premier Anna Bligh will achieve her target of 100,000 jobs over three years.

But guess what—I have every confidence that the LNP leader, Lawrence Springborg, will achieve his target as well: 36,000 jobs lost over three years. I have every confidence he will achieve his target because that is what he stands for: job cuts not the provision of jobs. That is their policy in Queensland and that is what they are saying. Guess what would have happened if by some miracle the coalition had squeaked home in their nightmare election on 24 November 2007—it would have been a world of Work Choices, the great policy of job insecurity. The coalition’s failure to deal with the issue of Work Choices is what this is about. It is all seen through the prism of their leadership tensions. They feign concern about job losses, and you can see the gleam on their faces when we talk about job losses. We are talking about the real face of job insecurity—the men, women and children in Australia who are actually facing job insecurity, job loss and financial insecurity.

So what are those people opposite pursuing? They are pursuing a policy of procrastination. They are pursuing a policy of not dealing with the leadership tensions opposite. They are pursuing a policy of trying to frustrate issues like alcopops reform and trying to stop our ETS getting through the Senate. They refuse to rid their body politic of Work Choices. That is what they are about. They are not just the architects and authors of Work Choices; they are the apostles of Work Choices. They are devoted to it. It is their alpha and their omega; their beginning and their end; their genesis and their revelation. That is what they are all about. This whole debate today is about stopping a concentration on getting rid of Work Choices. Those opposite are actually pursuing this myth that somehow they are the champions of jobs, that somehow they are the champions of economic reform and that somehow they are the champions of full employment.

In fact we on this side of the House are the ones who instituted economic reform in this country. We internationalised the economy. We got rid of the dead hand of McEwen-like protectionism. We brought in the Trade Practices Act. We developed a superannuation industry that ensured that the Australian public got support. That is what we did. Those opposite are wedded to their 19th-century ideological obsession with Work Choices. If they were on this side of the House, what would they have? They would have Work Choices—stripping away the terms and conditions, stripping away redundancy entitlements and making the public of Australia more insecure. Tell the truth. That is exactly what those opposite would be doing. They are the apostles of Work Choices—the devotees and the disciples of Work Choices. That is what they are about. They have drunk the Kool-Aid. They are the true believers—they just cannot get rid of it. That is what this is all about—it is about cuts, not jobs.

We on this side of the House are the people who are bringing forward economic security strategies and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan. We are the ones who the people are listening to. I would like to mention a couple of things. School buildings and other infrastructure does not build itself. Workers do it—tradesmen, plumbers, architects and carpenters. I have a few letters from some of the schools in my area. I am sure those opposite would have also received these sorts of responses. I have a letter from Principal Robert Mills of Raceview State School. That is the biggest primary school in my electorate. Some 935 children go to that school. It is a great primary school. My two daughters went there, so I was involved in the school life there. They are going to build a new multipurpose hall, extension resource centre and library with the money they are going to get. He is effusive about what it is going to do for the local economy.

Peter Doyle, the Principal of Brassall State School, the third-biggest primary school in my electorate, wrote to me. The coalition promised and promised to give him some money for a multipurpose hall. Guess what? We are delivering the multipurpose hall. We are doing it for the 731 students. That school is going to get millions of dollars. Peter Doyle is very happy. I have been to Peter Doyle’s school, Brassall State School. It is a great little primary school down the road from my office.

I have a letter from Bethany Lutheran School. Neil Schiller is the principal there. I visited him and had a look at their development and their redevelopment. Guess what Neil had to say? He said: ‘This funding could not come at a better time for us. The library that we can build with the money is far in excess of what we could have done under the grants under the BGA. There are no area guideline restrictions under BER, meaning that we can build a facility that will service a school of 400.’ They have a school of 200 currently, so it will not just cover the population of the school. ‘That is just awesome,’ he says, ‘and allows us to provide the sort of library that our school will need rather than having to add it in a few years time and end up with a facility not nearly as good.’

Leichhardt State School, a little primary school of 198 kids, is really struggling. I visited that school and met principal Lee Gerchow. That particular school really does need a massive injection of funds. They are going to build a new multipurpose hall, extension resource centre and science, innovation and technology centre. They are getting millions of dollars.

I think that those opposite should listen to this next point. I have received an email from Mr Phillip Manitta, who is the new principal at All Saints Primary School at Boonah. All Saints Primary School is a nice little school. There are 200 kids who go to that school. This is what he says: ‘Dear Shayne, just a quick email to pass on our sincere thanks to Kevin Rudd, to you and to your colleagues for the funding being made available to all primary schools. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add infrastructure to many schools, which will go a long way in making the education revolution become a reality. As you know, All Saints Primary School Boonah has experienced phenomenal growth over the last five years. Your generosity in making this funding available has allowed us to bring forward by at least five years the infrastructure we need to ensure we can continue to deliver the best learning outcome for our students. In fact this funding has allowed us to make our dream for Frank Street become a reality. We are already an active organisation within the Boonah community. We would welcome further interaction with the wider community when they come and make use of our new community infrastructure. At All Saints we hope to use the funding to build a multipurpose building on Frank Street.’

I went and had a look at that school with the Labor candidate for Beaudesert, Brett McCreadie—and I hope he wins and beats Pauline Hanson and the LNP candidate in the Queensland election. The LNP candidate does not do anything down there. He runs around and breaks into all kinds of things, like Big Brother. He wants to promote his rock group. But in fact he does nothing for the area. Brett McCreadie, a former soldier and union official, will do a great job if the people of Beaudesert vote for him. This is what Phillip Manitta says at the end of his letter: ‘As an educator I praise you for your foresight and courage in delivering a package to primary schools that will not only benefit our current students but those of future generations.’

That is what we are doing. We are investing for future generations in employment, infrastructure and community life. All those people in regional and rural areas who fail to support this, thus failing to support infrastructure development, community infrastructure funding and roads funding in rural and regional areas in Queensland as well as other states, should hang their heads in shame, because the Rudd Labor government are investing for future generations, as Phillip Manitta said so wonderfully well and eloquently in his email to me. Those people who voted against the ESS and the Nation Building and Jobs Plan should really have a good look at themselves. (Time expired)

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member must have been asleep at the wheel somewhere if he did not notice the Howard government’s Investing in Our Schools Program or Roads to Recovery. They were similarly well received by the Australian community. When the Rudd Labor government came to office in 2007, it inherited a country in superb shape. There was a record low number of industrial disputes, two million new jobs were created and unemployment was at a 30-year low.

In 1997 the coalition government skilfully navigated around the Asian financial meltdown and Australia came through that crisis in very good shape. It should serve to remind us all that prudence in shaping policy should always prevail, because the alternative—reckless spending and reckless policy—has a devastating long-lasting impact on the lives of every citizen. I remind the House that it took 10 years to pay off the last federal Labor government’s spending spree.

Recklessness, though, has so far been the hallmark of the Rudd Labor government, with the decision to give an unlimited guarantee to the four major banks when the global financial crisis first emerged. This decision had an immediate and adverse impact, draining liquidity out of the investment banking sector, with dire consequences for business, the effects of which will be felt for a very long time to come. There will be an effect on jobs. Such reckless decision making is dampening business confidence, stopping business projects in their tracks and beginning the downward spiral of job losses.

Given the severity of the global financial crisis, the Leader of the Opposition offered to work with the government and made the suggestion of a modest guarantee that would have preserved savings without the savage impact of drawing capital away from business investment and development. That offer was rejected. So much for bipartisan work to try and look after the best interests of the Australian public!

Hot on the heels of that ill-informed policy, the government now proposes further measures that will cause businesses, at worst, to review their future prospects in Australia and whether there is a future for their companies in Australia or, at very best, certainly to review their position and possibly to cut jobs. We are already seeing evidence of that in abundance every day. The other two damaging measures are the industrial relations reform and the emissions trading scheme.

The industrial relations reform will inhibit employment, damage the economy and cause anxiety about future job prospects for those already employed and those about to seek employment. Like it or not, we live in a global context where it is easy for enterprise to move to the countries that offer the most advantageous conditions and, while I would not advocate always acceding to the demands of enterprise, it is foolish and naive to put unnecessary barriers in the way of enterprise, which will therefore jeopardise jobs in Australia.

The second policy based on a scheme designed by the international community over a decade ago is the dangerously flawed emissions trading legislation—another enterprise and job killer. By having such a narrowly cast policy, the government is missing an opportunity to build new industries and create new jobs while meeting Australia’s greenhouse targets. I am not a climate change sceptic. I support the need for measures to address climate change. But, sitting as it does in this great Asia-Pacific region, Australia has an incredible chance to develop a strong alternative energy industry and to export that know-how. We have some of the best scientific and technological brains in the world, and neighbouring nations want assistance in driving the great engines of their economies while at the same time reducing pollution. The recent Envirogen comments highlight the negative effects of Labor’s ill-conceived emissions trading scheme on the renewables sector and therefore on future job growth in that sector.

Australia has a real chance to maintain high employment by supporting existing industries and by creating new green jobs. The best Labor can come up with is the job-destroying policies of an outdated ETS and industrial relations legislation designed to drive down employment prospects. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was very interested to hear the Leader of the Opposition speak on his MPI a little while ago. He got to talking about job losses and the emissions trading scheme. He then attacked the Prime Minister and said that the Prime Minister was changing colours a lot and whatever—it did not make a lot of sense. But then I realised that he was trying to defend himself because he is the one that has been changing colours daily. Sometimes a couple of times on the same day he has changed from one policy position to another. He got onto Castro and communism. He went through a whole range of things—neoliberal-ism and social democrats.

Of course he is getting confused. I think the public are getting a bit confused. I understand that 70 per cent or so of the banks in England are owned by government. I do not know if that is socialism or capitalism. I think the general public are getting a little confused as well as to the economic system that we are working under. But there are extraordinary times applying to our world and to our economic structures. The Leader of the Opposition went on to talk about jobs and how the opposition believe in jobs, jobs and jobs. But of course we know that they have opposed all the measures that this government has brought in which would help stimulate our economy and help save and keep jobs.

They—that side of the House—are the ones who supported Work Choices. They were the ones who brought that bill in. They are the ones that are continuing to support that concept. Of course we know that there was always Work Choices, which was to tear away conditions and tear down wages for ordinary working Australians. Neoliberals and conservatives have that whole ‘get paid less than a living wage but you can get a dip out of the church box to feed your family’ view. It does not seem to have changed much. They are still supporting that basic concept without really wanting to change. If they did want to change, they would not be opposing the Fair Work Bill that is in the Senate at this very moment.

So the inconsistency of the Liberal Party and the Leader of the Opposition comes through constantly to this side of the House and also, I think, to the general public. It is starting to jump out when I talk to my constituency that there is a very inconsistent position from the opposition. Whether that is stimulatory packages, emissions trading, climate change or whatever, there is a real inconsistency happening there.

The Leader of the National Party talked about the government ‘throwing out jobs’; he said jobs were being thrown out by government. I do not think the government has made a policy decision to dismiss anybody, so that was a bit hard to understand. In his whole delivery he did not mention that there is a world financial crisis going on which is making it difficult for all governments and all economic systems to be working well and that it is having an effect right across the world. But of course we know that our economy is coping to some degree with this and we are hopeful that, with the stimulation packages and our policy decisions, this government will help the economy from going into a very bad depression.

There have been a lot of positive things said in recent days about how long the world economies will continue to go down. So I would be hopeful that, with the way that we are operating and the way this government is dealing with these crises, we can look forward to the future—hopefully coming out of this within a year or two in a more positive way. I am sure that the pensioners that received their cash— (Time expired)

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

Order! This discussion has concluded.