Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We are in this chamber today as expectations of us as elected representatives have changed. The politics-as-usual approach that I've seen in my short time as a senator over the last four years can no longer cope or deal with the issues that people are confronting today. I think it's important to note the role the opposition has been playing in responding to this and in being constructive.

As Senator Kitching said in her contribution to this, I think that, obviously, for those people directly impacted by them and also for those people who observe them, seeing those queues outside Centrelink offices really brought home to people how devastating the changes that people are confronting are going to be. People of my generation have been in the workforce since school, for 20 or 25 years, and have basically been employed that whole time. I know that finding themselves now out of work and relying on government subsidies for the first time in their lives is having a dramatic impact on those people.

It's really important that the role that the opposition plays continues to be constructive. I'd like to acknowledge the work of the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, the senior shadow ministers, particularly those in health and Treasury, Tony Burke and others. They have held the government to account, but have done so in a way that has been constructive, which we saw through the first part of this year with the bushfires and we've seen in dealing with the COVID-19 emergency as well. It's often the case that the government have got to the right decision after insistence from Labor, and I think that is an important role for us to play. Labor has identified gaps in the health and economic response, but, instead of just identifying those gaps and trying to charge at the government to say there have been shortcomings, we have been constructive. We have been constructive in the health area and we have been constructive in the economic response, which is the substance of why the parliament is back here today.

The Australian people are no doubt looking for outcomes, so they don't want to see unnecessary political debate. They don't want to see unnecessary political arguments and game playing; they want to see a constructive approach. They can look to this parliament for guidance and hope that there is going to be support for them when they need it, both from a health point of view and from an economic point of view. But they also want to see hope for the future; they want to see that the country is going to get through this come out the other side in a stronger position.

There's no better example of the way that the Labor Party, as the opposition, have behaved during this than when we talk about the JobKeeper package that we are here to debate today. The government initially rejected the Labor idea of a wage subsidy, which, from a Labor point of view, was designed to help keep people in work. We welcome the package. We acknowledge the fact that the government has been working constructively with the union movement as well, which I think has been an important development for workers in Australia. But what is disappointing is that the government can't bring themselves to bring forward a package that supports more workers.

I'll focus on the requirement that the government have insisted on with regard to a casual employee needing to be in a workplace for 12 months. If one looks at ACTU data, which is based on ABS modelling, there are 215,000 Queenslanders who do casual work but have been with their current employer for less than 12 months. This includes 11,000 people in Central Queensland, 8,300 people in Wide Bay, almost 11,000 people in the Moreton Bay region north of Brisbane, 3,400 people in Toowoomba and 82,000 people in Brisbane. These are just some of the areas that I look after in Brisbane that are going to be adversely impacted because the government couldn't quite bring themselves to have that 'team Australia' moment that they like to talk about. They like to talk about it when they are setting the agenda, but they can't quite bring themselves to talk about it when there are going to be people who are adversely affected because of the decision-making of this government. We will continue to pressure the government over this issue. There are a lot of people who will be adversely affected, and we need to be on their side. (Time expired)