Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's become a bad habit of mine to reflect on the comments of the speaker who's preceded me and I don't intend to do it in relation to all of Senator Robert's speech, but I will just say this: a speech that presumably is produced for distribution in social media in Queensland where the refrain 'Australians are slaves' and an inference—more than an inference—that other senators in here aren't putting their obligations to the Australian people first is deeply offensive and it's calculated for a pretty base political purpose and ought to be treated that way. I have deep disagreements with the people who sit on the other side of this chamber and some of the characters who inhabit the southern end of the show, but I do think that people actually are—sometimes in a misguided way—putting the national interest first. I think that we all ought to reflect on those kinds of comments and reflect on how language is important, and how political language is especially important.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Labor Party called for a wage subsidy package to support the Australian economy. I remember because I was one of those people calling for it. It was rejected by the government. We supported it because we could see the international evidence amassing in comparable economies overseas where they were adopting a wage subsidy approach—in the Scandinavian countries, in Europe and, not least, in Boris Johnson's United Kingdom. We knew how important it was to preserve the relationship between workers and their employers. We knew how important it was to prevent mass lay-offs and the catastrophic effects of long-term unemployment, particularly in our suburbs and regions. We knew that it was necessary because it would allow the Australian economy to recover more quickly.

We have cooperated with the government's approach. We have criticised it, but we have taken a constructive approach to dealing with the questions of stimulus in the economy. We do think that the government has got some elements of this wrong. We do think that the early access for superannuation program, which has provided the lion's share of the stimulus package so far, has meant that low-income Australians' retirement incomes in the future have been squandered. We know that if the government had moved faster thousands of jobs could have been saved.

There are many people excluded from the JobKeeper package: one million casual workers; workers in local government, many of whom have already lost their jobs; workers in the university sector. It is still hard to fathom why a government would take action that is so destructive to our national capability in research and teaching, but there will be mass lay-offs in the university sector. That will have a devastating effect on Australia's research capability, and it is not in the national interest. It will have a devastating effect on school leavers and their certainty about getting into the courses that they need to get into. That will have a long-term devastating effect. Childcare workers are excluded. Arts and entertainment workers are excluded. And, of course, we've seen in all of our capital cities the spectacle of food queues of foreign visa workers and university students from overseas.

There are also important design problems, which other speakers have addressed. We are being deeply critical of the September cut-off date—the snapback. Well, now it's a taper-off. We will support the legislation because it's necessary to, because the alternative is a deeper catastrophe. But we do say that the conditions that necessitated a wage subsidy are still with us, and the withdrawal too early or tapering off too early of the wage subsidy program will have long-term serious effects in the Australian economy, particularly in terms of people's jobs.

Snapback was always a bad idea. The government knew it was a bad idea. It is consistent with the Morrison government's now tried-and-true approach: step 1, hold a press conference; step 2, announce a program with a focus-tested name; step 3, dodge questions; step 4, refuse any accountability and blame somebody else. It is government by press conference. We've seen it in HomeBuilder, the government's home building scheme, which was an abject failure. HomeBuilder was announced at a press conference. It is a portmanteau name that sounds like it came from a third-rate marketing agency. They continually dodged questions about it and refused accountability. I imagine that is in no small part because the minister responsible for it has other matters that he needs to attend to in the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party and possibly isn't focused upon his real responsibilities. We've seen it in aged care. We saw it in the arts rescue package. There was a big press conference, this time with a big arts and entertainment industry name, Mr Sebastian. The package was announced on 25 June. Not a dollar has been spent. In fact, the facility that they named it in, the business that they announced it with, hasn't got a zack out of the program—not a dollar.

There's the COVIDSafe app. You can take the marketing boss out of Tourism Australia but you can't take the marketing out of this Prime Minister. No matter how serious the national crisis, no matter how overwhelming the pandemic, this bloke, the member for Cook, doesn't have any other speed but marketing. The snapback didn't come, and that's a good thing, but it still lives on in the imagination of many of the Liberals and Nationals on the other side. Take, for example, Mr Joyce, the member for New England—the seat where I grew up. In April, one in five workers in the electorate of New England were receiving JobKeeper, with 5,205 businesses and 19,780 workers' jobs supported by the JobKeeper package. The total fortnightly amount going into the New England economy was just over $30 million. However, he told local papers in May that he wanted the program to end as soon as possible. He said:

I hear what the Labor Party have been talking about and that is keeping these stimulus packages going longer.

Of course our hearts say that could work, but of course the accountant side of us says it can't, because it is money that is borrowed and money that has to be repaid.

He went on to say:

One of the peculiar things people have got to understand is this money is borrowed from overseas and in many instances from China, which we have to pay back to them, yet that was the source of the disease in the first place.

It sounded a little bit like Senator Roberts's recent contribution. It's an absurd approach. Following it through would have devastating consequences for the people of New England—the people Mr Joyce claims to represent. It's wrong. It's deeply wrong economically, but, most importantly, it's in direct contradiction to what his own constituents say they need. Regional manager for the NSW Business Chamber, Joe Townsend, said:

We haven't seen the economy come back at all. It could be something that could be wrapped up just before the end, but as it stands, JobKeeper should remain in place. The government does have to be very smart about its physical budget and not over do it, but given they have granted this, they should certainly see it out through to the end.

Who knows what will happen if Mr Joyce is successful in his quest to regain the leadership of the National Party? The Australian people don't need Mr Joyce with a stronger voice at the cabinet table. The snapback was never based on economics or any coherent understanding of debt or how the economy works. It's always been a slogan. It's always been based on a callback to what Mr Frydenberg called the 'Reagan and Thatcher model'.

We have a tough week coming up in front of us, I think. Payroll data from last week suggests that 50,000 Australians lost their jobs in August. Accounts data is coming out this Wednesday, and we know that there must be grim statistics coming because of the Treasurer's performance this morning, when he waved his arms around a lot and blamed the Premier of Victoria for everything that was going wrong. We're still expecting 400,000 people to lose their jobs between now and Christmas. This is a deep and difficult recession and we cannot cut our way out of it. What we need from this government is a plan for jobs. What we need from this government is a sustained commitment, but not to marketing and announcements. We need this government to follow through and deliver a package that will deliver jobs for Australians, particularly in our suburbs and in our regional centres.