Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

So 50,000 jobs have gone since the election of the Abbott government. This is a government who said they were open for business, who said they wanted to cut red and green tape, and who made a promise of one million new jobs. All they have done is cut the jobs of Australian workers. The Abbott government has no idea how to run an economy which supports jobs, our living standards and vulnerable people in our communities. Not only that, the Abbott government does not understand the nature of the jobs in our economy, or the level of their complexity, and that we dumb down our economy when we allow the car manufacturing industry to collapse and other industries, which rely on complex technologies, to just disappear. The Abbott government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to jobs.

In the car industry, Holden was goaded out of the country by Treasurer Hockey, and, now, Toyota has announced that they will close Australian manufacturing by 2017. But the PM has told us not to worry and that workers will go 'from good jobs to better jobs'. When pushed on that question, the Prime Minister of our country had no idea where those better jobs might come from. Undeterred, the Abbott government then went on to blame the workers and their unions for negotiating wages and conditions. It shows their complete ignorance about how the Fair Work laws work in this country when employers and employees sit down, bargain, negotiate and come up with an agreement. But again, despite not being asked, the Abbott government went on to try and interfere in SPC, Holden and Toyota by asking whether they needed help negotiating. Well, actually, no they do not; and none of those companies blamed their workforce.

Still undeterred, the Abbott government last week, and the week before, went on and on about the outrageous wages and conditions in the SPC agreement, telling us that 'the age of entitlement was long gone'. And guess what? They got the SPC agreement wrong. But they will not admit that they made a mistake and they will not apologise. They just keep steadfastly moving on, with their blinkers well and truly on, about how to read an agreement—in fact, how to read the right agreement.

Yesterday in this place I had the pleasure of meeting with Australian Metal Workers Union delegates who came to tell us about the shipbuilding industry. They are great delegates who are experts on the shipbuilding industry and proud members of the union. Again, the Abbott government is completely asleep at the wheel when it comes to shipbuilding. There has been no action yet on the white paper. We have 4,000 jobs and a technical, complex and highly skilled workforce in that industry. What are we going to do—just buy ships from overseas? Are we going to let that industry go the way of the car making industry? That would seem to be the case to me because the Abbott government does not understand jobs, does not understand our economy and does not understand the complex technologies required in many of these jobs. It wants to see a dumbed down economy where it can control the workers and keep wages at poverty levels.

Well, guess what. All the research says that is not how you build a smart economy. We are still waiting to see the beginning of the million jobs. In fact, it is more than that now if you deduct what we are losing in this country. The shipbuilding delegates have some good ideas. They are the experts in their sector. Why don't you sit down and meet with them, have a look at the white paper they have put together about their sector, and make sure that, into the future, we retain highly skilled workers in this country, are ahead of our game and have a government, unlike the Abbott government, who absolutely understands how important skilled jobs are to our economy. The Abbott government is asleep at the wheel and has no understanding.