Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Vocational and Technical Education, sitting opposite, is responsible for this debacle where we are importing record numbers of workers because he has refused to train Australians. He has refused to invest in the future of this country, and that is why he is so sensitive to this. He is a symptom of the problem; he cannot ever be part of the solution.

It is almost incomprehensible that the Treasurer’s budget speech did not mention the word ‘education’ once. Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman visited Australia this year with a simple but powerful message, one we in the Labor Party understand: investing in our young people produces the highest return on investment that any nation can make. Everywhere in the world, governments recognise that the skill of a nation’s workforce will determine who will capture high-value, high-growth markets, who will be out in front and who will fall behind. But in Australia we have this myopic government that does not have a plan to deliver the skilled workers it needs right now, let alone the skilled workforce it needs for the future.

And that of course applies to the government’s narrow view of child care, as we saw demonstrated in the House today, and their narrow approach particularly to our national infrastructure needs. There is no plan for innovation, no long-term plan to fix our crumbling infrastructure, clogged roads, slow internet connections, near-empty dams and overburdened ports. They had a plan to shore up The Nationals. That is a world away from a national infrastructure plan.

According to the BCA, a comprehensive infrastructure reform program would add an extra two per cent to GDP after five years, and Labor understands that funding is not the primary issue. The key obstacle is a lack of leadership and a lack of proper strategic planning, as once again is demonstrated by the ignorance of the minister sitting opposite. That is why a Beazley Labor government will establish Infrastructure Australia to drive infrastructure planning, development and investment, establish the Building Australia Fund and allow the fund to consider all investment opportunities suitable to its return and risk objectives. This budget also did nothing to address Australia lagging in the world in both available broadband speeds and broadband pricing, which is why the Leader of the Opposition put forward Labor’s alternative plan.

There are some welcome initiatives in this budget, and Labor is happy to endorse them, but the benefits will quickly disappear if we continue to neglect the long-term competitiveness of our economy. What was needed was a budget that uses the prosperity of today to build prosperity for tomorrow. What we were given was a short-term political document. A prosperous future for all Australians depends on locking in growth. I know one thing for sure: Labor would not have missed this opportunity.

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