Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Stephens for her interest. I know she is very focused on the need to create jobs in this economy. During the period of global economic turmoil, Australia's economy, as I said earlier, stood in stark contrast to the rest of the world. While millions of jobs have been lost in Europe and the United States, the Australian economy has created around three-quarters of a million jobs since Labor came to office in 2007. Critically, we continued to create jobs during the worst of the global financial crisis. This is due to sensible economic management by the government and the stimulus efforts we put in place. While Australia is not immune from the turmoil being experienced in European financial markets in the short term, the prospects for medium-term jobs growth in Australia continue to be strong.

Immediate jobs growth will be driven by the pipeline of resource investments, which stands at more than $400 billion. In order to support these investments, my department estimates that Australia will need around 270,000 more construction and mining workers over the next five years. So that is more work for a range of people like welders, plumbers and brickies et cetera. It is also about creating high-skill jobs. We know there will be thousands of jobs for engineers, technicians, customer service personnel, trainers, cleaners, lawyers, scientists and accountants. In fact, in the next five years the department projects that Australia will need one million additional workers in the services industry. Job creation is one of the main benefits of the mining boom, but it will also give us the capacity to sustain jobs into the longer term and to continue to ensure that as Australians develop their skills during the mining boom, they have access to high-skill, high-pay jobs over the longer term.