George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to be able to inform Senator Trood what the government is doing in relation to the skills shortage. I preface my remarks by saying that a skills shortage is a problem, but it is a problem that has a particular cause. The particular cause of the skills shortage is that unemployment in this country is so low at the moment and therefore the labour market is so tight. I remind the Senate that unemployment in Australia at the moment is 4.3 per cent. When the government came into office in March 1996, unemployment was 8.2 per cent, having peaked at 11 per cent under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. Unemployment today is at a 33-year low. There are more people in work than there have ever been in this country and, what is more, ever since May 2006 unemployment has been below five per cent and trending downwards.

Senator Trood, that is why we have a skills shortage. Through you, Mr President, I want to tell Senator Trood what the government is doing about it. I might reverse the order of your question and tell you, first of all, what I know about alternative policies. The ALP does have alternative policies to those of the government to deal with the skills shortage. The policy was announced by Mr Kevin Rudd at the weekend. Do you know what it is? It is to set up a task force to look at it. This seems to be the Labor Party prescription. I have been going through the Labor Party’s policy announcements across the whole gamut of public policy. I can tell you that, so far, the Australian Labor Party has committed to establishing 91 reviews, 41 new agencies, 17 new boards and panels, 18 new task forces, five parliamentary inquiries—it is a bit like that Christmas carol about a partridge in a pear tree—and two summits, and we are counting. That is what we know about the alternative policies of the Australian Labor Party: government by conversation; government by talkfest. We know that Mr Rudd can speak fluently under wet cement in two languages, but he never gets anywhere. All he does is refer matters to yet another policy review, task force, agency, summit or parliamentary inquiry.

By contrast, the Howard government has undertaken specific real measures to address the problem of the skills shortage created by the tight labour market, the consequence of the high levels of good employment which we have brought to the Australian—