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

This matter before us goes to the core of government and leadership, that matter being the government's failure to deliver on a plan for jobs and economic recovery while more than a million Australians are currently unemployed and a further 400,000 Australians will lose their jobs by Christmas. As of today, we've had the news that Australia is officially in its first recession for almost 30 years. The June quarter GDP numbers show the economy went backwards by seven per cent, the worst fall on record. That's more than three times the previous biggest fall of two per cent in 1974. The scale of this downturn is vast when compared to Australia's last official recession, when the economy shrank by 1.3 per cent and 0.1 per cent over two consecutive quarters. This is the single biggest immediate challenge that the Morrison government faces.

The Australian people expect leadership on this matter and they have not seen it to date. In fact, they have seen the opposite. In my home state of Tasmania, unemployment is disturbingly high. More than 50,000 Tasmanians are looking for work or for more hours. Tasmania has lost 15,500 jobs since February—6,700 of them are full-time jobs. Youth unemployment is frightening, and a deeply worrying number of mature-aged workers are also out of work or searching for many more hours. Because of the nature of this recession and the sectors that have been hardest hit, we have seen a disproportionate number of women thrown into unemployment. Deloitte Access Economics' Business outlook report indicates that Tasmania's economic situation is set to get worse before it improves. The report said Tasmania's earlier boom was driven largely by the international education and tourism sectors and that Tasmania was deeply exposed to the impact of coronavirus related travel and operating restrictions. As JobKeeper payments are reduced, we will see the full force of that impact. Deloitte expects unemployment to rise in Tasmania to 8.6 per cent in 2021. That means tens of thousands of Tasmanians unemployed and struggling, looking for a way forward—a way forward that government should be showing them.

But what have we seen from this government? Instead of a jobs plan, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and Treasurer Frydenberg want to wind back JobKeeper, cut super and freeze the pension. This recession will be deeper and unemployment queues will be longer because the Morrison government is leaving too many people behind. The trouble is we're dealing with a government struggling with its own ideological base, a government that is facing a backlash from its own backbench for spending the money that is keeping so many people in jobs. It was dragged kicking and screaming into providing wage subsidies through JobKeeper and is now like a rabbit in the headlights. All it can talk about is dropping the rate of JobKeeper and then phasing it out. It is inevitable that this recession will be deeper and unemployment queues longer because the Morrison government is just leaving those people behind.

We have seen ACOSS warning of a social and economic catastrophe once most COVID-19 government supports are removed. That process will start later this month. Tens of thousands of businesses with their workforce sustained on JobKeeper are looking to the government for the next steps. On the west coast of Tasmania, 41 per cent of businesses applied for JobKeeper support. In Burnie, 39.4 per cent applied. In Devonport, 40.1 per cent applied. On the east coast of Tasmania, over 51 per cent applied—over half. That's how very serious the situation is.

Last night I spoke in this place about the impact of the COVID crisis on north-west Tasmania. I spoke about the viable businesses that cannot recover until tourism and travel restart and borders reopen. The car hire company on King Island and the magnificent Cape Wickham golf course on the northern tip of that island represent just one sector that needs a plan. All cutting JobKeeper will do for employees of businesses like those is make it even harder to pay their bills and buy food. Without a plan for jobs, that money being stripped out of local economies will be disastrous. There are many businesses in a similar situation on King Island, hundreds like that in north-west Tasmania and tens of thousands in our country. They're absolutely viable and waiting for coronavirus restrictions to ease, but it will take a plan for them to truly spring to life again. All of this is happening against a backdrop of increasing inequality, presided over by this government—the Morrison government.

Before COVID hit, according to research released by ACOSS and the University of New South Wales today, the incomes of those in the top 20 per cent were six times higher than those in the bottom 20 per cent. This is worse than in 2015-16, when the ratio was five times higher. So I have a tip for those opposite struggling for ideas: your plan needs to address this growing inequality. It needs to have a focus on long-term, secure jobs with decent wages. But, instead of working on this plan, Prime Minister Morrison and Treasurer Frydenberg want to wind back JobKeeper, cut super and freeze the pension.

This government is busy shirking its duties. It's so busy avoiding accountability in this area, still dreaming of some kind of magical snapback to the way things were and hoping it will wake up and find that this has all been a terrible dream. Well, I have news: this is not a bad dream. It is the new reality for Australia, and hundreds of thousands of Australians are terribly, terribly frightened that they have no future, that they won't find work, that their businesses won't be able to recover and that their kids will never have a decent, secure job. They need to know the government has a plan—a plan for jobs; a plan that protects and boosts viable businesses and their employees; a plan that helps people in less viable businesses refocus and innovate; a plan to retrain and reskill; a plan that shakes up grasping and falling job service provider networks; a plan that turns Centrelink into a safe place where the skilled staff who have suffered under this government's policy and punishment ethic can now show their real skills in helping people navigate the system and in pointing them in the direction of opportunities and support; a plan that works with school leavers and TAFE and university graduates to identify work opportunities and move towards them; a plan for arts and entertainment; a plan for the university sector that doesn't involve making university degrees unaffordable; a plan to support mature-aged workers who have joined the unemployment queue in their thousands back into work; a plan for women; a plan for young workers; a plan to help people who have drained their superannuation accounts rebuild their retirement savings; a plan that is developed sector by sector, taking into account the subtlety and needs of each one; a plan for tourism; a plan for hospitality; a plan for manufacturing; a plan for communications; a plan for energy; a plan for early childhood education; a plan for aged care; a plan for skills and education; and a plan for primary industry. Let's see that plan for jobs and industry from this government before the toecutters get to work on JobKeeper.

This government is at the crossroads now. They can have a vision for healing this country, for developing real jobs and for addressing inequality or they can continue on with their pathetic, ragtag, piecemeal, bandaid approach, bickering amongst themselves about ideology and watch this recession—this new reality—deepen, worsen and go on for longer than it needs to. I say to the members opposite: you have so much work to do, and it's time you got on with it.

I said last night in this place to the dysfunctional gathering on the other side: you have shown the country that you are spectacularly good at breaking things. You've already broken Centrelink and you absolutely broke aged care. You have punished the unemployed, lumbered them with illegal debts, disrespected them and kept them in abject poverty, and now our economy is broken. People's hearts and lives are breaking as they face years without work and the poverty that ensues. Others face the demise of businesses they've dedicated their working lives to building as their children join unemployment queues and face despair. It's well past time for you, the Morrison government, to demonstrate to the Australian people that you are up to the job, that you are capable of fixing it and that you have a plan for the future of Australia—a well thought-out plan—that picks up all the people along the way.