Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations. Will the Attorney please outline to the House how the Morrison government is working to drive jobs growth across Australia, which is of a critical importance as we come out the other side of the COVID-19 recession?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question, for her hard work in her electorate and for her representation of Tasmania. As the member knows, today's figures highlight the importance of everything that we have done as a government to save jobs, everything that is being done to save more jobs and all of the policies to create job growth into the future.

In terms of policies that have worked to save jobs, the industrial relations employment flexibilities that were built into the first round of JobKeeper were clearly a critical component of saving hundreds of thousands of Australian jobs. Without those flexibilities, many businesses would very likely have collapsed, costing jobs and livelihoods.

One example from the member's home state of Tasmania is a business employing 20 people—an events management business. Members can imagine how the turnover for that business was affected. They said: 'JobKeeper flexibilities gave us the ability, when we stopped dead, to re-engineer the business, which was a very positive thing. Without the JobKeeper flexibilities, the business wouldn't have lasted in its pre-COVID form for six months and would have resulted in significant job losses. The worst-case scenario is that we would have gone into liquidation and debt.'

In a survey conducted of those businesses in the first round of JobKeeper, 80 per cent of the respondent employers said that they viewed the industrial relations flexibilities as either important or essential for the continued operation of their business and for keeping their employees in jobs. And four out of five of those employers supported extending the flexibilities for a further period of time, with those businesses citing job losses and business closures as being the most likely outcome if the flexibilities were removed. That is why with JobKeeper No. 2 we had a plan for those legacy businesses who were coming back but who were not yet out of the woods—those businesses that might still be down 15, 20 or 25 per cent of their turnover. That plan allowed them, subject to very clear protections for employees, to access those flexibilities for another six months, to help them get back to prosperity and job growth and to save those jobs. That plan was clear and it was passed into law by this parliament.

The opposition's position on that was simply to say, 'We don't agree with that.' They had no plan and no alternative—just a no. Had that legislation not been successful and those flexibilities not extended, jobs would have been lost. This is an absolutely key part of ensuring that jobs are preserved and that jobs can be grown. We now have unions and businesses who have spent in excess of 100 hours with each other considering other ways and policies where they can reach agreement to grow jobs. That process is going to be critical.