Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, I do not expect the opposition to indicate any interest in the jobs of working Australians, because if we had followed their strategy an extra 200,000 working Australians would have been out of work and we would have seen this nation in a deep recession. In addition to the tragedy of unemployment, there is also the loss of skills and the loss of the ability to give young Australians a start. If we look at earlier economic downturns—let’s look at the early 1980s—we saw a 28.7 per cent drop in the 1980s in apprenticeship commencements and it took five years to recover to pre-recession levels. In the 1990s there was a 35 per cent drop and it took 13 years to get to pre-recession levels.

In this economic downturn, on the early data we can say we are already moving to returning to pre-recession levels. We do not want to see a generation of young Australians stranded. If we had taken the advice of the opposition, we would have seen that generation stranded. We would have seen more than 200,000 extra Australians out of work. In terms of analysing this advice from the opposition much has been made of their economic folly and their inability to analyse and respond to what needed to be done in the face of the global financial crisis and global recession. I think there is more at work here than simply that kind of economic folly. There is malice at work because they showed in government their complete indifference to working Australians, their job security and their needs by introducing Work Choices. In opposition, through denying economic stimulus, they continue to show that complete indifference to the needs of working families to have a job.

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