Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to lament the employment situation in Tasmania and the fact that the Labor Party is not doing its job in looking after other people's jobs. Just this morning, for instance, The Mercury newspaper confirmed the news that 18 specialist ocean and atmospheric jobs are going at the CSIRO in Tasmania. How ridiculous! We should be growing our science and research community, not cutting it—and we certainly should not be cutting these sorts of jobs when it is so important to understand and deal with climate change, as well as the oceans to the south and the Antarctic continent to which we lay such a significant claim.

This news is all the more alarming coming, as it does, so soon after the federal budget with its $2.8 billion cut to the tertiary sector that will cost 150 jobs at the University of Tasmania. Then there is the construction sector, where the rebuild of the Royal Hobart Hospital is over a month behind schedule, with the result that hundreds of workers are finishing up on other projects and will soon be unemployed or heading interstate. A person's job often underpins the welfare of whole families. It is way beyond time for the federal and state Labor Party to stop worrying about their own jobs and start worrying about those they govern.