Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure whether people listening to today’s broadcast would be aware that the speech just given was by the Leader of the National Party in the Senate and a former parliamentary secretary. I do not know whether it is an infection that seems to be for Queensland Nationals—I do exclude my New South Wales colleagues from this. If you just listened to that speech, it just indicated what doormats the National Party are. We just had a speech that indicated that the government is clearly useless, incompetent in dealing with the four major oil companies and, in the end, gutless.

I am pleased to get the opportunity to speak today because I want to talk about the difficulties that a number of people are starting to experience in regional New South Wales in relation to employment opportunities. As a number of us here do, I cover parts of electorates that are held by non-Labor figures. Over the last few months it has been disturbing me that, despite the good news that we are being delivered on the jobs front, that is not my experience in regional New South Wales. There has been a spate of significant job losses only recently announced this week in Cowra. I will come to that in a moment. There has been very little said by any government senator or MP.

On the Central Coast of New South Wales, which covers two marginal seats held by the government—the seats of Dobell and Robertson—less than a month ago Coles announced that at some point this year they will close down their warehouse, which directly employs 440 men and women. I said ‘directly employs’; that is not including the truck drivers and the suppliers to that operation. They will lose their jobs. I remember when that warehouse was moved from Smithfield in south-western Sydney. A number of the men and women uprooted their lives and their homes to move to the Central Coast of New South Wales. But they have now been advised, some years later, that at a point this year those 440-plus jobs will be disappearing.

The member for Robertson, Mr Lloyd, has been able to secure some assistance from the federal government to alleviate the transition from employment to unemployment for these people. But on the Central Coast of New South Wales there are no jobs. I was there less than a month ago. An old truckie mate of mine there told me that a friend of his had advertised in the Central Coast Express Advocate that he was a qualified forklift driver, he had a significant amount of experience and he wanted employment. He told me that his mate had put that advertisement in that paper on the front page for some six months. He never received one phone call or inquiry to pick him up. You can imagine what is going to happen to the 440-plus that are going to be made redundant by Coles on the Central Coast in the coming few months.

At least Mr Lloyd did something about it. We have heard not one word from the member for Dobell, Mr Ticehurst. In fact, if you wanted to see Mr Ticehurst, you would have to go to a business park in Tuggerah and go up to the first floor to see him. He used to have his office in a shopping centre. Now he does not. He is isolated from his community. No wonder none of them can get to talk to him about their problems with employment.

Let me go to BlueScope Steel in Port Kembla, where 250 people have lost their jobs. What did the government do about it? What have they said about it? We know why they have lost their jobs; it is because of cheap imports. Let me tell you what 50-year-old Mr Necati Dun said. He was quoted in the Australian newspaper. He summed up the blow to families, including his, in the region. He spoke of the pain he felt as provider to two young sons. He said:

To take away from them because you are losing your job and not earning the wage you used to, it is a shock.

Two decades ago there were 20,000 jobs in Port Kembla. Now there are fewer than 5,000. And now this 50-year-old plant has closed down, getting rid of a further 250 people. No doubt that will include—as we all know, we are multiplying by three—over 1,000 more in the region. What has the government said about this?

I go to Lithgow. There is a department store in Lithgow called Braceys that has been operating continuously for 121 years. It has been selling clothing, footwear, manchester and toys. Just recently, it had to make the decision to close down its three-storey retail building. It employed 50 people and it will cut that number down to 20 people. At Nestle in Blayney, at the Purina factory, 30 to 40 jobs have been lost. There is no employment there. On the web today I looked at the local Blayney paper to see what jobs were being advertised. I have been advised that there is not one job in the Blayney paper. Thirty-one jobs are advertised in Lithgow. I looked at them, but I am not sure how many of the people who have been made redundant will be able to apply for them.

I go to Cowra. About 200 people have just been made redundant in Cowra. What is the government’s response to these jobs being lost in regional Australia? Nothing. I looked at the Cowra Guardian. There are three jobs available today in the Cowra Guardian. There are jobs available for a schoolteacher, a car wrecker and some fruit and vegetable pickers. Do you think that those 200 people are going to be taken up by those employers? They are people working directly for the abattoir. That does not include the truck drivers and the other suppliers to the company. Where is the government’s response to this in regional Australia? I am glad that we have two National Party senators here today, because at some other stage they may wish to respond to what I say.

I have been advised about another threat to employment in this country. One of the big logistics companies, TNT, is about to be sold by its Dutch-controlled company. TNT directly and indirectly employs 3,000-odd people, including subcontractors. Since they were advised that this was going to occur, the union representing those people has been seeking guarantees that there would be no job losses and that existing agreements would be honoured. They cannot get those guarantees. The union wrote to their international organisation, the International Transport Federation, and asked them to intervene for them and speak to the Dutch owners in Holland. Similarly, they will not give the guarantees that the Australian workforce requires.

So we have TNT—a major and iconic transport company in this country—on the verge of potentially closing down not only its city operations but its extensive regional operations in New South Wales and the rest of Australia, and jobs will disappear. It may be unfair to put it onto the government and say, ‘What are you doing about that,’ but this is coming. I invite my National Party colleagues, whom I regard mostly as honourable men and women, to respond to my queries at some time. What will these men and women do once they are put on the unemployment queue? There is nothing for them to do in Blayney, Cowra or Lithgow or on the Central Coast—just to name a number of places. What is your plan for these men and women and their families? Are they to drift to the cities and clog them up? We have heard allegations that there are too many people living in Sydney, Melbourne et cetera. What are they to do? There is no response from the government.

Mr Acting Deputy President Brandis, I say this genuinely, and maybe it will be seen as a political contribution: I am very concerned for these people, as I am sure you are too. I want a response from the government because, over the life of this government, we have seen what they have done. In the last few days we have heard concern expressed by the Australian Industry Group about the lack of skills in this country. The government slashed $13.7 million from the incentive program for regional and rural businesses to take on apprentices and employees. It underspent $28 million in Regional Partnerships programs in the 2005-06 period. I can tell you the unemployment figures: in Gosford-Wyong it is seven per cent, in Illawarra-Wollongong it is 7.8 per cent, and in the Mid North Coast it is 8.4 per cent. If those people do not drift to the cities, they will be stuck in the country where there are no jobs. Even the part-time member for Lindsay—and I imagine that she has to be part-time because it looks like she needs to be a full-time landlord—said on Radio National last weekend that Work Choices is fine if there is very, very low unemployment, but when there is very, very high unemployment you take what you are given.

The figures on unemployment that have been broadcast seem, to my mind, shonky. Senator Ian Macdonald, you might laugh. Let me just say this: the ABS statistics—and they are the only ones I have—show that about 550,000 people are recipients of Newstart. ACOSS estimates that nearly 160,000 have been transferred to Newstart because of Welfare to Work. So, with these figures, we have growing evidence that unemployment is being camouflaged and masked. I stand here today and genuinely ask the government what they are going to do in these regions other than facilitate some sort of payout to these men and women and their families. I want a program from the government that will find employment, create employment, for these people—not jobs delivering pizzas; not jobs where you work in cafe bars; not jobs where you have to buy a van or supply your own truck to be a courier; not mickey mouse jobs that are part-time or casual at best. I want the government to respond—