Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I barely know where to start. This is a government that has got unemployment with a '6' in front of it, 100,000 more people out of work, 300,000 of them young Australians without any prospect of a future with this government in charge, and we have the parliamentary secretary giving us a lecture on Adani. We know what the true story of Adani is—it was an approval by the Newman government under a Howard government act. So, if this is anybody's omni-shambles, it is yours—it is the Liberal Party's omni-shambles. We know this because Lenore Taylor wrote an article in The Guardian yesterday headlined, 'Abbott government war on green "saboteurs" is Laurel and Hardy slapstick'. That is what we just got from the parliamentary secretary—slapstick, an alternate reality which we are all supposed to subscribe to while those opposite go about their business of chaos and confusion.

I know through bitter experience this government's attitude to jobs and investment. I remember the headline from last year, on 11 December, 'Hockey dares GM to leave'. What happened when they rejected that billion dollars' worth of investment? I can tell you and the member for Corio can tell you what happened: 50,000 jobs in Victoria and South Australia were flushed down the toilet. We are now seeing the consequences of that in the northern suburbs of Adelaide and in the suburbs of Melbourne and Geelong. We are seeing the rejection of a billion dollars' worth of foreign investment from General Motors, from Toyota.

What else have we seen in the southern states? We have seen them export jobs to Japan. How do we know this? The National Security Committee of cabinet signed off on the press releases and on the decision to build submarines in Japan. With that, thousands and thousands of manufacturing jobs, white-collar jobs, engineering jobs and design jobs will disappear. That is the reality. Don't trust me—look at the headlines: 'Shipyard closures start with job losses'; or from the ABC, 'Adelaide shipbuilding company ASC expecting more job losses, Senate inquiry told', which went on to say,'266 jobs had been lost from the company in the past three months.' It goes on. The ABC news again: 'Twenty-six shipbuilder workers at ASC told not to come back'. And then there is Williamstown. This is from The Age: 'Abbott government under fire as 125 jobs axed at Williamstown shipyard'.

That is this government's record; it is a miserable record. What are those people—those who are being thrown onto a labour market that is poorly adapted to meet their needs, because this government is asleep at the wheel—told? 'Oh, things are great. Things are terrific. It's wonderful.' They should be doing handstands about how great this government is. Talk about delusions of grandeur! It is also a government that leaks; it is full of inaction. There are attacks on wind farms, the appointment of a wind farm commissioner. Then we get them railing against a Howard government environmental act. There was the decision by the Newman government—they were the ones who stuffed up Adani, not the Labor Party. Don't come in here and point the bone at us: it was your people, your state government, who did it. Why did it fail? It failed under the Howard government test.

Where are we left? I will tell you: we are left with a government that is not functioning—as the cabinet has been told—'exceptionally well'. We have now reached the levels of farce with this government, and we all know it. When your lines leak—and trust me I know this—when people start joking about the lines leaking and everybody is laughing, 'Oh, yes, we had another leak today,' then it's all over. I wish those opposite well with their deliberations on who might replace the Prime Minister. We all know the clock is ticking on him. Sooner or later someone is going to get the majority in the party room, and the 39 will grow to 61 or something like that. And then it will all be over for this Prime Minister, and well should it be, because he has failed on this fundamental question of jobs. That is why this government is descending into chaos and confusion. That is why they should fail.

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