Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We heard the Prime Minister again today at the dispatch box solemnly assuring Australians that the government would keep all their solemn election promises, apart from the ones they will not, apparently keep. There was one election promise that the assistant minister waved around, the plan for Australia. Included in that plan for Australia is a solemn pledge to create one million jobs over the next five years—a key election promise of the government.

We know from a leak inside the Liberal Party—I am not going to allege who it was—that this was a pledge made up by the then Leader of the Opposition. We know from inside the Liberal Party that they had no modelling to show that they could create a million jobs over five years. They had no basis in their policies for that commitment; they just plucked the figure of one million out of the air. Nevertheless, it is in writing. The now Prime Minister says you can only believe what he says if it is in writing—those are his words. Well, it is in writing, in their plan for Australia—their key pledge to create one million jobs over the next five years. Let us get a little update on how that is going. How is that coming along? We have had an update in today's unemployment figures. We know that, in January, 7,100 full-time jobs were lost across Australia.

I accept that monthly figures move around, monthly figures will go up and down and you cannot read too much into one monthly figure. I completely accept that. But here we have a trend. Since the last election 54,000 full-time jobs had been lost before today. When you add today's announcement, we go to well over 60,000 full-time jobs lost since the election. There has not been a month since the election in which there has been a full-time job created in Australia.

Last year we saw 68,000 full-time jobs lost across the country. That is a very substantial figure. I will tell you how substantial it is. In 2009, when we faced the worst of the global financial crisis, we lost fewer full-time jobs than that in a whole year. In less than six months under this government we have lost more full-time jobs than were lost all through 2009. In fact, another telling fact is that there were more full-time jobs lost last calendar year than in any year since 1992. What a shame for Australia. All through the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis, we saw more jobs lost last calendar year than in any year since 1992.

I do not assert that every single job lost since the election is the fault of the new government. Of course there are different forces at work in the economy. But this Prime Minister made a solemn pledge to create a million jobs and he has an obligation to have a plan to do so. We just heard about the plan from the assistant minister at the dispatch box. This so-called plan is on replay all the time.

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