Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This new government has been a disaster for working Australians. Since the election in September, 50,000 full-time jobs have been lost. Worse, there are thousands more people set to be unemployed as a result of this government's policies and inaction. It is a government that is more concerned with attacking workers than growing jobs; a government that still thinks it is the opposition and whose agenda is to blame the previous government for everything, despite having been in charge of the country for months; a government whose purpose is to cut jobs, cut services and cut living standards for working Australians, all the while blaming workers and making it harder for people to retrain and find new opportunities; a government that went to the election promising the world on jobs—promising one million new jobs—but whose policies and inaction have seen 50,000 jobs lost in the first five months of its term; a government that promised support for programs before the election only to silently cut them while no-one was looking.

On the last point, you need look no further than the Wage Connect program, designed by the Labor government to get long-term unemployed into work. The federal government provided companies with $6,050 after they had employed an eligible job seeker for six months. This was a very successful program, run by the former government, with many thousands assisted into work. What did the new government do? They cancelled the program. In early December, the Assistant Minister for Employment, Luke Hartsuyker, cut the program despite the obvious fiscal benefits of reduced assistance payments and increased income tax receipts. Miraculously, two weeks later, the assistant minister's boss, Senator Eric Abetz, ventured up to the north-west of Tasmania and brought forward his election policy, the Tasmanian Jobs Program. The Tasmanian Jobs Program provides only $3,250 to an employer—and only to Tasmanian employers of course.

Minister Abetz claimed that halving the wage subsidy would provide a much needed boost to the Tasmanian job market. Minister Abetz is no doubt aware that his halving of the Wage Connect subsidy effectively imposes a 10 per cent increase in the cost of employing a long-term unemployed jobseeker on the minimum wage in Tasmania. Despite the rhetoric from those opposite about Australia now being 'open for business', short-term decisions like this only make it harder for businesses to put on more staff and get more Australians into work. There is no intention for the program to work. It is a trial program for two years that is halving assistance and only providing it to Tasmanian jobseekers. This political trickery is exactly what Labor warned Australians about before the election. This new government, driven solely by an agenda to cut services to working Australians and to Australians doing it tough, slashed Wage Connect in half, rebadged it, and had the gall to pat themselves on the back.

The removal of Wage Connect will have negative impacts on employment across the country. Despite their rhetoric, this government are all about making it harder for those Australians who are doing it tough. They are blaming workers, and their unions, at every turn. I am a proud member of the AMWU and was the state secretary in Tasmania for a number of years before my election to this place. A number of members of the AMWU's shipbuilding division are in Canberra today, trying to build support for the Australian shipbuilding industry. The union has put together a comprehensive plan for Australian naval shipbuilding, outlining the employment consequences if the government fails to act now.

I would like to highlight the work of Senator Carol Brown; Jane Austin, the Labor candidate for Denison; Mike Kelly, the former Minister for Defence Materiel; the AMWU; and local industry. They have all been involved in the proposal for a naval shipbuilding hub for Prince of Wales Bay near Hobart in Tasmania. The hub was to build on the tremendous work of Incat, Liferaft Systems Australia, CBG Systems and Taylor Brothers and grow the shipbuilding industry in Tasmania. Central to this proposal was a commitment from the then Labor government to procure the next round of Australian naval fleet purchases from Australian shipyards, including those in Prince of Wales Bay. So far, the new government have not committed to this plan. To the AMWU shipbuilding delegates from across the country, I welcome you to Canberra and I wish you well in your campaign to secure high-skilled shipbuilding jobs for Australian workers.

I implore government ministers to sit down with these workers, listen to their ideas and work together to sustain this industry that is vital for both our national security and our economy. To do this, government ministers need to end the blame game and stop these ridiculous attacks on workers. Unfortunately, I do not hold out much hope. On the front page of today's Australian Financial Review the Treasurer seeks to blame workers for Toyota's decision to cease manufacturing. That claim has quickly been exposed as complete fiction. Toyota's media statement, issued this morning, reads:

Toyota Australia denies the allegations in today's front page Australian Financial Review story … Toyota Australia has never blamed the union for its decision to close its manufacturing operations by the end of 2017, neither publicly or in private discussions with any stakeholders.

This is a sign of the government's desperation—they are fabricating third party statements to blame workers for their own policy failures. Rather than blame the workers and misrepresent meetings with senior management from major employers, the government should be focused on its election commitment to create one million jobs in its first term—an election commitment that is already set at negative 50,000, after a disastrous start to this government's term.

This is a government whose leader fabricated the financial circumstances of SPC Ardmona in trying to justify his reasons for turning his back on workers and farmers in Central Victoria. His own backbencher Dr Sharman Stone denounced the Prime Minister's attack on the workers. The company released a statement refuting each of Mr Abbott's claims point by point. One of his claims, that the workers were paid a wet places allowance and that this payment was overgenerous, showed his complete lack of understanding of Australian enterprise. This payment, of a few cents an hour, was paid when an employee provided their own uniform because their clothes were wet for a significant period. As the company has disclosed, a number of years ago the decision was made to provide the workers with appropriate clothing, and this wet places allowance has not been paid for some time.

It is easy to blame the workers. Mr Abbott, Mr Hockey and Senator Abetz are getting good at it. But, as this government is discovering, it is much harder to put in place policies that actually create jobs in Australia. Or at least it is hard to not be completely hypocritical when doing so. In the lead-up to last year's election, both SPC Ardmona and Simplot approached the government and the opposition for co-investment assistance for their operations in Shepparton, Bathurst and Devonport respectively. The then Labor government sat down with both companies and worked out packages that would see significant investments by both industry and government in upgrading facilities. Of course, the opposition made no such commitment.

However, the line in the sand had not yet been drawn. During the election campaign, the now Prime Minister visited Cadbury's chocolate factory in Hobart, a site with a significant AMWU membership, to announce a $16 million co-investment promise. One of the purposes of this co-investment was to 'increase chocolate production to 70,000 tonnes a year.' Of course I welcomed this announcement; I welcomed investment in the Claremont site and the government's support for the workforce. But this announcement came out of the blue. There was no immediate concern about Cadbury closing up. There was no immediate investment required to modernise the factory to save jobs. The then Opposition Leader was rejoicing at the expected increased production at the factory, while the Liberal candidate for Braddon, Mr Brett Whiteley, took to social media with a Cadbury chocolate bar to highlight the extra demand for milk and the resulting boon expected for Tasmanian dairy farmers. Clearly this grant, this election commitment, was about increasing production at the chocolate factory—not tourism.

After the decision on providing assistance to SPC Ardmona, the Prime Minister was asked why Cadbury's was more deserving of government funding. His response was that the funding was to build tourism infrastructure at the site; it was different because it was a tourism grant. This comes from a Prime Minister that has abolished the tourism ministry and slashed the tourism infrastructure grants established by the previous government to assist small and medium tourism enterprises; this comes from a Prime Minister whose parliamentary secretary with responsibility for tourism has been given the job of ending federal government involvement in the domestic tourism industry. Rather than blaming workers, this government needs to outline exactly how it is going to meet its promise of creating one million new jobs. (Time expired)