Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition try to score political points here today over slow or soft growth in the Australian economy, but one of the problems that they face, and one of the problems that sit at the heart of their lack of economic credibility, is that they are against one of the measures that are driving up economic growth in our economy at the moment, and that is public spending. The coalition have indicated that there is $315 billion in public spending, mainly cost-of-living measures and investments in economic infrastructure, that the coalition would not have committed to, and they have indicated that they will take hatchets to parts of this spending. Well, that's going to have a negative impact on economic growth.

The second criticism that was levelled heavily today is that this is a government that doesn't have a plan. Well, that's simply inaccurate. The coalition members are not listening. There are three aspects of the government's plan to support economic growth that I want to talk about today. The first is competition reform, the second is investment in skills and training in Australia and the third is our paid parental leave reforms. But the reality is that economic reforms and policies that support growth and support improvements in productivity in our economy take time to implement. You put in place the reforms, and the dividends of those reforms come a bit later on. That's essentially why the government is making the investments that it's doing.

The first is in relation to competition reform. Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh recently released a consultation paper on revitalising national competition policy. The original national competition policy, a child of Paul Keating and an economically reformist Labor government, was a driver of economic growth and proactivity in Australia. Competition drives firms to innovate and to make positive changes internally. It can also incentivise the flow of resources to more productive outputs. Competition is a good thing in our economy, and the original National Competition Policy aided economic growth in the 1990s. In a report published in 2005, the Productivity Commission estimated that the gains from the policy reforms that flowed from the National Competition Policy led to a permanent increase of 2.5 per cent in Australia's GDP. As Dr Leigh recently observed, in contemporary terms that lift equated to around $50 billion a year, or $5,000 per household. By revitalising national competition policy, the government is putting in place measures that will improve productivity in Australia over time and will ultimately be drivers of economic growth.

The second aspect of those investments is investment in Australia's human capital through education and training. That goes back as far as early childhood education, the proper and equitable funding of Australia's public schools and investments in vocational education and training, including fee-free TAFE programs. This government has invested $500 million to create 320,000 new places in TAFE over the next three years. Five hundred thousand Australians have enrolled in fee-free TAFE places. The government has invested $30 billion in the National Skills Agreement, where, together with states, we're seeking to expand vocational education and training in priority areas. That includes TAFE centres for excellence in critical and emerging industries. There's also $600 million invested into skills growth and development in clean energy, construction and manufacturing. These are things that will form foundations for economic growth in the future.

The final aspect I'd like to talk about is changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme. These changes have increased the period for which paid parental leave will be paid from 20 to 26 weeks over the period from July 2024 to July 2026. It expands and makes more flexible the circumstances in which paid parental leave can be accessed by parents of both genders. That radical organisation the Business Council of Australia itself supports the reforms on the basis that they are going to increase workforce participation among women and, it's thought, will also result in positive productivity gains in the long term.

A former French premier said, 'To govern is to choose,' and ultimately this government has made choices that will yield long-term economic benefits for Australia. The same cannot be said for those opposite, who are yet to release serious policies about which of the spending proposals and cost-of-living measures will be cut, how they would change Australia's tax system, or which of the industrial relations reforms that are driving wages up and improving workplace conditions they would strip away.