Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I speak to the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020. JobMaker was announced in the budget with much fanfare. The Treasurer announced his headline—'JobMaker will support 450,000 jobs'. Why didn't the media think to ask the Treasurer to define the word 'support'? His own Treasury doesn't agree that the word 'support' means what the Treasurer thinks it does.

Treasury indicated at Senate estimates hearings that JobMaker will create not 450,000 jobs but a meagre 45,000 jobs—one-tenth. This inconsequential measure will not make a noticeable difference to the prospects of everyday Australians and yet the government is treating JobMaker as a headline grabber. Here's a brochure from the government. The centrepiece of their economic recovery plan for Australia is 'JobMaker—creating jobs and rebuilding our economy'. It's right here on the cover. It must be true because it's glossy.

Once again this Liberal-National government is misrepresenting announcements as achievements—a well-worn ploy that many marketers use. Coupled with a glossy brochure there are diagrams, high-viz vests, headlines and lots of colour. JobMaker is budgeted to cost $4 billion. Yet, with only 45,000 jobs likely to be created, the cost is actually only $400 million. To put that into perspective, the government will spend $400 million on JobKeeper in one day—$400 million is one day's JobKeeper.

Let's turn to the number of jobs and training places created in this budget. When they're added up, they exceed the number of people unemployed. This budget is a hoax. According to the Treasurer's own numbers, this budget will put everyone back into a training place or a job before the next election—zero unemployment. Didn't the Treasurer add up all these wild claims in the budget and realise that the numbers just don't add up? The government has let hyperbole run amuck. Then again, working a calculator has never been Treasurer Frydenberg's strong suit. JobKeeper itself was out by just $60 billion!

The coalition's Restart program was announced in 2014 as a $10,000 subsidy to help 30,000 older Australians back into the workforce every year. Six years later this scheme has helped only 9,000 older Australians a year, less than one-third of the 30,000 a year the government announced. Even worse, almost half of those workers were terminated once the minimum employment period ended. That leaves just 4,500 per year.

On top of that, many of the businesses that claimed Restart were not serious about putting on a new employee. Instead, those businesses were serious about free money from the government. That's the problem with corporate welfare. It turns businesses into subsidy farms reliant on the government. It creates phony jobs, not sustainable breadwinner jobs. It creates weaker companies, not stronger companies. It replaces the profit motive with a handout mentality. One Nation opposes corporate welfare—the transfer of wealth from taxpayers to large corporations.

This government's economic recovery plan for Australia is more corporate welfare, more printing money to give to the banks and more pumping up of the housing bubble. That's it; that's the whole plan. If the government were fair dinkum about creating jobs, it would create the right business environment for growth and would invest in restoring our country's productive capacity. Our productive capacity has been destroyed by a lack of infrastructure and by the decimation of our electricity sector, which is driving manufacturers overseas. We've gone from having the lowest electricity prices in the world to having the highest, and manufacturers are leaving in their droves and taking with them their jobs to China, India and Asia. Restoring our productive capacity includes building dams, power stations, roads, bridges and transmission lines. It involves cutting red tape, cutting blue tape and cutting green tape. It would involve—if the government had courage—comprehensive tax reform so that we had a proper, honest, effective and efficient taxation system, a transparent taxation system. And then let the economy get on with the business of creating jobs and wealth for all Australians.

Instead, this government chooses to promote a casualised workforce. JobMaker is not about creating full-time work; it is the reverse. It motivates, indeed drives, businesses to replace one full-time employee with two casual employees, replacing one real, breadwinner job with two junk jobs. The JobMaker protections around higher payroll and headcount allow for this casualisation process. This is an attack on breadwinner jobs—jobs that can support families; jobs that can put kids through school and university so kids have an option for a better life than their parents had. Remember that, Australia? Remember when kids fared better than their parents? Under successive Liberal-National and Labor-Greens governments, that's become a thing of the past. Our generation is the first generation to pass on less, not more, to our kids—less wealth, less opportunity, less freedom.

The Liberal-National coalition have form on this. Prime Minister Howard's government spent 11 years breaking up full-time breadwinner jobs into junk jobs—casual and part-time work. They are jobs that have no bargaining power, with lower wages, fewer entitlements and less security. I've talked about that many times in the Senate. I have got so much data and evidence on that. There is no wealth creation in these low-paid, casual, subsistence jobs. As a result, Australia's median wage has gone backwards over the past 30 years. Why some union bosses have gone along with it is beyond me, but we can talk about that another day. Today we're talking about the Liberal Party declaring war on families, on holidays, on workers' home ownership and on everyday Australians trying desperately to accumulate wealth just to stash a bit away for the future.

JobMaker is another nail in the coffin of Australian families, courtesy of the corporate greed, hubris and arrogance that have overtaken the Liberal and National parties. One Nation opposes this legislation, this marketing ploy. Instead of trying to look good, government should do good. We need to get our country back to basics. We need to invest in restoring our country's productive capacity. That's what decides our country's future.