Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. How can the coalition fail to understand what our local community infrastructure program means in terms of jobs? How can they miss that? Don’t they realise that when we invest in the regeneration of schools—and there are schools in every single community—that we are letting tradespeople keep their apprentices on. By doing so, careers are saved and skills crises are avoided. It means that restaurant doors do not have to close, that waiters and chefs keep their jobs and that small business people who went into the hospitality industry—a very difficult industry—are able to keep the roofs over their heads.

Many of the Rudd Labor government investments will bolster our productivity tomorrow. ‘Productivity’—there is a word that those opposite do not seem to understand. Seventy per cent of the investments in the nation building for recovery plan are in roads, rail, ports, broadband, clean energy and other priorities that will stimulate the economy. This means that Australia will recover from the global recession faster than most advanced economies.

The coalition’s let-her-rip policy has failed. Their dole queue schadenfreude is misplaced. Deep down, those opposite who have an ounce of decency know why their hands-off approach was flawed from the start. It is the very reason that they say one thing in the House and something different when they slink out the side door back to their electorates.

Why doesn’t the coalition ask, any more, how many jobs are being created by the economic stimulus strategy? Why do you not ask that question any more? I remember when the Liberal Party used to stand for something. I remember that the National Party of my youth used to stand for something. Where have those agrarian socialists gone? How do those opposite live with themselves? Here is a piece of infrastructure the opposition should invest in—a big wall full of mirrors that they should drag into their party room tomorrow so that they can have a long, hard look—(Time expired)

See this speech in context