Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is not the first time in the last couple of weeks that the member opposite has been shot down. Today he showed just exactly how far out of touch this government really is. They talk about the jobs they create; they are not talking about underemployment and they are not talking about full-time jobs. You can get a four-hour-a-week job or one for six hours a week, but that is not going to pay your bills or put food on the table or pay your mortgage or give you petrol to put in your car.

This MPI goes directly to the heart of the failure of this government. As the constituents of McEwen know, for the first time in 20 years more than 800,000 Australians are now unemployed. There are 100,000 more unemployed Australians than when Labor was last in government. We all know—or at least those who care to admit it—that the last time unemployment in this country was so high, the now Prime Minister was the employment minister, and that was in 2002. What are they doing while this is happening—while we have this 20-year high? They spend six or seven hours in party room meeting debating a no-brainer policy, because the Prime Minister cannot admit that he is wrong. No doubt they are secretly spending quite a bit of time looking at the polls to decide how they are going to dispatch the dead weight on this government and the Prime Minister. The only thing he knows is down. As they say in the classics, they are spending all their time fiddling while Rome burns.

It is not just the statistics on the ABS data. The failure of government is about real people around their kitchen tables wondering just how they are going to meet the mortgage payment next week. They are asking themselves: how are they going to be able to pay for the kids' clothes and how much petrol can they put in the car each week? These are the real conversations going on in households around this country. They happen every day of the week in Doreen, Mernda, Sunbury, Romsey, Seymour, Wallan and Craigieburn. Only last week I put up a message on my Facebook page about how this government is failing Australians. These were some of the comments I got. Michelle said: 'I am actually very frightened for my children's future. This government is killing our country.' Frank said that Australian workers are in for a long hard road; and Susan said to us that she was unemployed back in 2002 and now, thanks to Tony Abbott, she is unemployed again.

We hear these stories every day. Companies are closing down or downsizing their staff. Only yesterday I read of a business in the neighbouring electorate of Scullin, where a lot of people who live in my electorate work. The company, Tieman Industries, is going to close down; it is going to shut its doors after 70 years of business, of manufacturing and servicing, in this country. What it is trying to do is sell off some parts of the business to try to keep its manufacturing afloat. Why is it a problem? Because cheap imports are coming in. Why are they getting rid of the service technicians? Because under the secret FTAs that the government refuses to release electricians, servicemen and so on can be imported for less money, less conditions, less knowledge and less ability. This is what we are dealing with going forward because of this government's drive to the bottom on employment, wages and conditions. Yesterday Mr Tieman said that it was the difficult economic conditions and the strong offshore competition that put the pressure on, meaning the businesses were unsustainable.

The real issue at heart is that many people received a message to come to work, and in a newspaper article it said that they will all be paid their full entitlements and superannuation. Tieman employees went to work yesterday at 3 pm to have a meeting, only to find out what? There are no superannuation payments, their entitlements are gone and as of Friday they are all unemployed. Families—

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