Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Deputy President. These questions around transparency are really a smokescreen for those who want to undermine and stand against a more open economy at any price. We see that in many ways from those on the 'lunar Left' and also those on what I'll politely call the 'reminiscent Right', who seem to think that somehow it was a better place decades ago, a perception which is built upon many myths and many untruths, such as the suggestion that somehow our trading relations have hurt employment. If we go back to the start of the 1980s, before Australia pursued the big waves of economic reform, the total number of employed Australians stood at around six million people. Today that's more than 12.6 million people. We've more than doubled employment over that time.

Senator Hanson interjecting—

I hear one of the 'reminiscent Right' interjecting from the other end of the chamber. Indeed, yes, the population has grown, but the proportion of the working-age population in employment is higher today than it was in the 1980s, Senator Hanson. We've created jobs faster than our population has grown. So that's another of your myths knocked out along the way. And indeed the mix of full-time versus part-time jobs has, contrary to the lies that are told, remained relatively stable during that time.