James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

What I would like to do with my opening points is acknowledge what Australia has been hit by in the last six months. It is something that is unprecedented in the history of Australia but also in the history of the world. You can go back to the Great Depression, which was something my grandparents used to talk about, growing up in a household where there wasn't any money and people had to hit the road to get work. But they didn't have that axis of health on one side and economics on the other. What we're seeing here in Australia is an axis of an economic hit and a health hit.

What we've got to focus on—what Scott Morrison and the government have been trying to do from the beginning—is protecting lives, saving lives, but also protecting livelihoods. That is so important for Australians. Over the last six months we've seen Australia at its best. We've seen an Australia that has come together. We've seen an Australia where, through the national cabinet, which probably at times was slightly boisterous and rambunctious, leaders of different levels of government came together to focus on the national interest. I think that is something we've forgotten about, when we look at coronavirus, that we have seen the best of Australia. We've seen people put aside their political partisanship to look at how we can work together.

I have strong views on how some state Labor governments have treated coronavirus and have used it as a political weapon. I certainly have strong views, that I've picked up through the magic of osmosis, on what has happened in Victoria with the infringements on civil liberties but also, importantly, on how people have given up their civil liberties, that they understand it is in the national interest. So, when we come to looking at the piece of legislation that has come through us here today in the Senate, it is about what is in the best interests of this country and what is in the best interests of trying to help Australians. That is so very important.

Some of the speakers tonight have talked about JobSeeker. In Queensland at the moment, we are faced with not getting workers who go and pick fruit. This is a massive issue in Queensland, where we have a very important agricultural industry. Thousands of jobs and thousands of businesses depend on this industry, but we cannot get workers to pick the fruit. One of the reasons that those in regional Australia give is that JobSeeker is actually acting as—and this is where the law of unintended consequences comes in—a handbrake on people being able to go and look for work. So you find in the Wide Bay-Burnett area—a massive horticultural area—and in the Darling Downs, where I come from, that the fruit that needs to be picked is going to rot on the trees and then fall off onto the ground because we cannot get people to pick the fruit there. We as a society have to focus on whether it is the right thing that we allow businesses to effectively go broke. These businesses earn money and pay taxes, but these taxes are going to people on JobSeeker who should be looking for work but are not prepared to go and pick fruit. This is a serious issue facing Queensland, but it's not just about picking fruit.

In regional Queensland, there are areas of very high unemployment. But there are jobs going there. I met with the Mayor of Mackay, a wonderful guy called Greg Williamson—