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

Today's national accounts are devastating news for Australians and for the Australian economy. Senator Canavan said there are no great surprises there, but it is indeed very bad news: a seven per cent fall in economic activity, the biggest on record, the biggest contraction since the Great Depression. There are now a million people unemployed, and there will be circa 1½ million people unemployed by Christmas. So record unemployment now will be getting much worse by the time we get to Christmas. It is likely unemployment will be circa 10 per cent, and there are no prospects of a real recovery until 2022. That's the picture outlined. I want to give a clear outline of my view and the Labor view, reflecting our priorities, our values. I think that the government's response reflects their priorities and their values.

Firstly, the Australian economy was in deep trouble in 2019. Profound structural weaknesses were neglected and glossed over by this government. There was no growth in wages. There was falling productivity, anaemic levels of growth, a hollowing out of the labour market so there were no good jobs left anymore—just casual jobs being produced in the economy—and a decline in Australia's capacity to make things and in our export complexity.

The response of the government at the beginning of this year was slow and uncertain. That has made things much, much worse today than they should be. At the beginning of the stimulus package that they were dragged to, kicking and screaming, the government had a focus. I know that the Prime Minister said today in question time that he didn't hesitate to implement JobKeeper and JobSeeker. He said, 'We did not hesitate.' Well, he was reported as having said, 'I'm not going to have a bar of it.' They were still desperately trying to keep their 'back in black' surplus promise. There is a big gap between what the government say they did in March and what they actually did, because I, along with my Labor colleagues, was here making the argument for a fair dinkum stimulus package and a wage subsidy package that would keep Australian workers and their businesses connected and I remember the howls of derision and the outright rejection that came from the other side of this parliament.

The jobs crisis is being made much, much worse now and will be much, much worse than it should be because there is no jobs plan from this government. We know what the impact of long-term unemployment is, particularly in our regions and our suburbs. People opposite may not feel it and they may not see it, and they may not be able to empathise with the impact of long-term unemployment, but on this side of the chamber we do.

The government's management of this economic crisis looks an awful lot like their management of the aged-care system. The political strategy, at least, is identical. We all know that the coronavirus pandemic will have a very significant effect on global growth. The World Bank says that there will be a contraction of about 5.2 per cent. But today the government and Senator Cormann blame the pandemic. They blame the states. They blame anybody else but themselves, minimise the role of government, minimise the responsibility of government—possibly because they can't imagine government having a role in dealing with this crisis—duck accountability and avoid parliament. That has been a key feature of this government's political response this year—avoid the parliament, run from accountability in the parliament and then make a series of announcements with no delivery. You can take the marketing manager out of Tourism Australia, but you will never take the marketing bias out of this Prime Minister.

There are big challenges coming with the coronavirus pandemic. The wave of infections in Victoria illustrates that we are all vulnerable. All parts of Australia are vulnerable. The crisis in Victoria has occasioned a whole lot of cheap pointscoring from the other side of this chamber. There are senators on the other side of the chamber who are for open borders one week and for closed borders the next. They decry public health requirements one day and demand them the next. This hyperpoliticisation of the crisis is a key feature of why this government is unable to deal with, manage and find a plan for the Australian economy and Australian jobs. It's pretty straightforward: follow the health advice, roll your sleeves up, do some work and develop a credible plan that can lift the Australian economy out of the torpor that it's in.

Senator Canavan really did set out the government's position, which is to cut taxes, cut wages, cut red tape—by which he means, I think, just remove environmental protections—and cut services, like their 2014, 2015 and 2016 budgets all did, particularly in regard to aged-care funding. These are the people who've adopted, as the Treasurer said, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as their role models. Contrast that with what the Australian government did in 2008-09, when the global economy contracted by nearly three per cent because of the global financial crisis: strong early action—going households, going hard, going early—that delivered confidence. And the Australian economy did not contract over that period.

What are Australian families to make of this: no prospect of recovery with this government until 2022, families who can't keep their heads above water now, JobKeeper and JobSeeker being cut, and the prospect of looming unemployment? When will they have a government that's in their corner—that backs them, backs Australians—and is capable of doing the right thing?