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

At the request of Senator Gallagher, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) under the Morrison Government the Australian economy entered the coronavirus pandemic from a position of weakness not strength,

(ii) Australia has experienced the deepest recession in almost a century and the decisions the Morrison Government is taking are making things worse for hardworking Australians,

(iii) the Morrison Government intends to terminate JobKeeper at the end of March despite having no jobs plan to replace it and with 1.6 million Australians continuing to rely on the payment,

(iv) 2 million more Australians remain out of work or are working less hours than they need to support their families,

(v) unemployment is forecast to remain above pre-pandemic levels over the next three years,

(vi) wages growth, already at records lows under the Morrison Government, is expected to remain stagnant, and

(vii) Prime Minister Morrison deliberately excluded 928,000 people aged 35 and over from hiring subsidies; and

(b) expresses its disappointment that after racking up more than $1 trillion in debt and with no plan for jobs, the Morrison Government plans to cut wages, cut super and wind back consumer protections in the banking system that risks weakening the recovery and will leave too many Australians behind.

I'm very pleased to have an opportunity to speak in relation to this matter. We are in a position today where the Australian economy is in a very fragile state indeed. The Australian economy is in a very fragile state in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and because the public health response and the response of economies around the world has plunged the Australian economy into the deepest recession in nearly 100 years. But it's also in a fragile state because the underlying fundamentals of the Australian economy were very weak indeed in 2019, and they were very weak during the years leading up to 2019.

The Australian economy was characterised by low wages, low productivity growth and a government that had walked away from its responsibilities to the economy, pursuing a pretty shallow, pretty weak, visionless approach to economic management, abrogating its responsibilities as a government. That is in no small part due to the fact that what underlines the Liberal Party's obsessions with the economy is a deep antipathy towards cooperation, a deep antipathy towards Australians working together to make the country stronger and a commitment to the low road—low wages, low growth, low productivity and not much in the area of achievement. Because they have set their objectives so low, the outcome has been so poor. That is going to make it impossible for this government to summon up what's required in what should be a year of reconstruction, a year of growth and a year where we rebuild the Australian economy. It is impossible for this government to effectively conceive of a plan, beyond a marketing plan, to rebuild the economy.

I note that there has been a bit of a difference this week. Obviously, the focus group people have been hard at work. Many of them have been enriched by the rivers of gold that flow from the Prime Minister's office and from ministers' offices around the place to consultants who are mates of theirs who provide research and advertising to the government. They will, as they did every other time, turn up at election time with very deep pockets, enriched by the largesse from Mr Morrison's department and from the finance minister's department, ready to provide advertising material for the Liberal Party. I've noticed that their work must have said something, because, in the last two weeks of the year, what I saw when I walked into the supermarket in Holder in the ACT was an enormous billboard that said 'Our comeback'. It had all this green and gold stuff and a series of slogans encouraging Australians who were going about their shopping that Sunday night to think that the government was doing something for them, and all we heard in question time after question time after question time were weak replies from ministers to questions on the other side, supplemented by the refrain over and again 'our comeback'. It went on over and over again. It started being boring, and it became sickening. It was sickening because we on this side knew that it was supported by Liberal Party research and Liberal Party focus groups.

This week it has all disappeared. It's all gone. We're not hearing any more about 'our comeback'. We're seeing some other focus group tested phrases entering. I suppose a marketer has to market because they don't know how to do anything else. A marketer has got to market. A marketer has no capacity to lead, no capacity for vision and no capacity for policy depth, but he can market. We've seen that develop over the course of the past few weeks, and I know that this government, with depressing monotony, will be using press release, announcement, marketing campaign and focus group tested phrases. They will do everything but their job. They will do everything but look after the interests of ordinary Australians.

Well, at the end of last year, 912,000 Australians were unemployed, and it peaked at over a million in July. And 197,900 are long-term unemployed. They've been unemployed for 12 months or more. We have not seen a cohort of long-term unemployed Australians that large since the early 1990s. There was a 20 per cent rise from July 2016. That is 33,000 more Australians who are long-term unemployed. And 301,200 young Australians are unemployed. They are entering the labour market at a perilous moment, when the only jobs that are available for them—and we hear ministers opposite and the Prime Minister talking about jobs growth—the jobs that are emerging in the economy, are low-wage jobs. The jobs that are emerging in the economy are casual jobs. Many of the jobs that are emerging in the economy are at the low-rent end of labour hire employment, where labour hire employers rip off Australians, rip off companies and, indeed, get rivers of gold from this government through labour hire contracts in the Australian public sector. The other jobs that are available for them are gig jobs. The only jobs that are available for young Australians when they can get them are poor-quality jobs. And no amount of focus group tested JobMaker nonsense will change the experience of Australian families, who know that when their kids leave school, when their kids leave university, when their kids leave what's left of the vocational training system in this country, there is very little out there that they can look forward to in terms of a decent job.

So, 1,474,300 Australians receive either JobKeeper or youth allowance, and they are about to return to $40 a day. I know it's impossible for those opposite to conceive of what living on $40 a day is like. If you live in Sydney's eastern suburbs you don't meet too many people living on $40 a day; you would never have conceived of meeting somebody living on $40 a day.

Senator Bragg interjecting—

I'm about to come to Narrandera or Deniliquin or wherever it is that Senator Davey comes from—

Senator Bragg interjecting—

She's from Deniliquin. Well, you've spent a lot of time in the eastern suburbs, Senator Bragg. You find it difficult to leave, I know, and you find it very difficult to conceive of the experience of somebody who can't pay their rent, who can't pay for the basics, who struggles day to day. You couldn't struggle your way out of a wet paper bag, Senator Bragg. What you need to do is get some real life experience and get out there and talk to ordinary people. Senator Davey may well have met people in Deniliquin who've had to live on $40 a day. But perhaps, Senator Bragg, you could actually think deeply about the experience of their lives and try to understand that what your government is about to do is about to plunge them back into desperate poverty.

There are 1.3 million people out there who are either unemployed or looking for more work because the jobs they've ended up with are not sufficient to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, to put shoes on their kids' feet and to pay their utility bills. They are out there looking for more work—1.3 million people. There are just 129,000 jobs out there. For every job, there are 10 jobseekers. But this government wants to plunge those people who are looking for work into abject poverty.

What will happen when JobKeeper ends? Wage growth is at historic lows—well below two per cent, year after year. There's been no lift in the living standards of ordinary Australians. Bills keep going up. Costs keep going up. Rents keep going up. House prices keep rising. But what ordinary Australians are expected to cop from this government is no wages policy that's going to lift wages and the only new jobs are casual-gig labour hire. Indeed, instead of a plan to lift wages, a wages policy to work with business, unions and firms to lift wages in the economy, the government's introduced an industrial relations bill which will make it easier for employers to cut wages. That's the only recipe it's got for the modern economy in this shallow, sterile vision. No wonder the wages share of the economy is at record lows. No wonder it is.

Year after year, Australian workers are lifting productivity, increasing their work rates and working harder than many of their colleagues in countries around the world, yet their share of income has continued to decline. It has not been this low since the war ended in the Pacific. It has not been this low since our greatest national emergency. Yet the profit share of income is at a record high. These jokers over here have only one recipe—'The wage share's low and the profit share's high; we're going to cut your wages and we're going to cut your super too.' A wage cut and a super cut is a cut to people's income now and a cut to people's retirement income later.

Poor old Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, thinks that forcing companies to pay back JobKeeper that they didn't need is class war. There is no vision, no understanding, no empathy, no plan and no capacity to conceive of what life is like for ordinary Australians. What does this amount to for ordinary Australian families? It's Australians who have fought the coronavirus. The Prime Minister doesn't hold a hose in this area. There's been a complete absence of national leadership. It's been Australians, not Scott Morrison, fighting the coronavirus. It's a credit to them. On public health work, we know the Prime Minister doesn't hold a hose there. The states have led the pandemic response in every state—nothing from Scott Morrison. There's a national cabinet that scarcely meets and is really about announcements for the Prime Minister. A wage subsidy proposed by Labor—not Scott Morrison, not the Liberal Party and not the National Party—is the only thing that has prevented a full collapse in the economy. An increase in unemployment benefits proposed by Labor, supported by the Labor Party through both houses, is what this government proposes to cut.

There's the entire absence of a plan and the entire absence of a capacity to develop a plan. If you're going to develop a plan to solve the problems facing the Australian economy, you need heart and you need guts. This show is entirely incapable of summoning the heart and the guts that are required. The end of JobKeeper and the return of JobSeeker to $40 a day should fill all Australians with dread. There's no plan for any industry sector. We heard today in question time glib responses from the minister responsible. The tourism industry is about to collapse. There's no plan from the Australian government for tourism and no plan for any industry sector. This is a government that's abrogated its responsibilities and has become too content with just sitting on the treasury bench and not doing its job.