Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Polley for her question and recognise that, from time to time, people in the opposition are simply handed questions to ask on behalf of the tactics committee, and so I understand that Senator Polley has been given the unfortunate task of asking this question. Since 1998 the Job Network has in fact been extremely successful in helping unemployed Australians to move from welfare to work, placing over 640,000 job seekers into jobs in the last 12 months. And yet we are being asked to believe, by the honourable senator opposite, that somehow the Job Network process is not working.

From time to time the way we as a government administer Job Network or, indeed, any other activity from government can be informed by suggestions from those within the community. We are not beyond listening to some of those suggestions and, in fact, dealing with them. There are a whole host of examples where we have been responsive. To suggest that the Job Network process has not been working is to fly in the face of all the objective data which shows that the Job Network process has been extremely successful.

Of course, if we cast our minds back just a few years, when the Australian Labor Party were trying to administer getting people out of welfare into work through the Commonwealth Employment Office, you see the fantastic result that we have been able to deliver to the Australian community not only by creating the environment where jobs are being created at a very substantial rate—