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

The parliamentary secretary wants us to pretend that none of this happens! We can see what has happened in the rest of the world. They tried austerity—Spain tried austerity, Ireland and Greece all tried austerity. Europe has tried austerity. We can see the experiment over there. We tried growth. And now the Liberal Party, bizarrely, will try it through an act of 'liberation'. We know that Mr Abbott said that there was a $100-million plan to help 'liberated workers' find jobs. There are workers in my electorate who have been 'liberated' from their work. That is the reality of what the Prime Minister said—such callous indifference!

We know that when Mr Hockey was, famously, on the front page of the Financial Review on 11 December that the headline was, 'Hockey dares GM to leave'. There were no mistakes about what the government was trying there: it was trying to tip the car industry over. And it is not like they were not warned, because we had the very next day, on 12 December, the Financial Review saying, 'Holden's dramatic exit puts Toyota at risk'. So we saw Toyota fall over and now we see thousands of component jobs not just under threat but going. They will go, because the heart and the lungs of that particular economy have been ripped out. So now thousands of component workers will be at risk of losing their jobs.

You would think there would be a bit of reticence by those opposite. They would not want to claim it, not after The Age had on the front page of its paper on 11 February, 'Road to recession'. You never saw that while the Labor government was in; there was no talk of recession then. You would think that those opposite would be a little circumspect about what they were doing. But, of course, instead we have in Mr Coorey's column of 8 and 9 February this year with one minister, unnamed—he did not have the courage to put his name to it—quoted as saying:

It was Abbott who put the torpedo in the water over Holden.

So not only are they chasing these companies out of Australia; they are then rushing to lay claim to it. We saw that with SPC; a mere $25 million would have not just secured our last fruit processor but secured the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers stretching all the way to Queensland. You would have thought that, if anything would have motivated a Liberal-National government, it would have been that. But of course that was not enough to soften the hearts of those opposite. It was only the actions of the Victorian government that stopped the sort of economic cataclysm that is hitting my electorate, Altona, Geelong and places like that from hitting the good people of Shepparton.

You would have thought that, after playing rope-a-dope with Holden and sending the whole car industry over the cliff, the government would not do that with Qantas. But look at what we have had with Qantas. It has been four months. These problems are not new. They did not come up yesterday. They came up in December last year. So we had the Treasurer go out some time after, dilly-dally and think about it a bit. And then the Treasurer came out and basically gave a public indication that he was prepared to entertain the notion of a debt guarantee for Qantas, that somehow Qantas was different to the automotive industry and a different set of rules would be applied to it because of so many state owned enterprises, including the New Zealand government, being involved in the aviation industry. The Treasurer told Qantas in pretty explicit terms that if it got its act together then the government would give it a debt guarantee. That was what was intimated to Qantas publicly, and probably privately, and the share market price of that corporation went up with that expectation.

You cannot do that to a company. You cannot put all those indicators out there and then, in some sort of schizophrenic cabinet move, pull up stumps and say: 'Oh no, sorry about that. Sure the Treasurer laid down these four principles but we will just ignore them; now it is a free market, and we are not going to get involved other than to make some pretty minor alterations to the sale act, which will not fix the problem—that is, we will apply a solution that does not actually fix the current problem.'

So now we do not just have a problem with Qantas but the government's actions in dilly-dallying, setting up a straw man and then knocking it down has left the company in a worse position. If the company had rolled up in December and said it wanted a debt guarantee and the Prime Minister had said, 'That is not happening,' then the company would have known where it stood. But that is not what happened.

We had the same level of indecision and the same level of expectations put out there publicly by the Treasurer regarding GrainCorp, only to have a decision that completely went against the grain of everything that was said before that—that is, GrainCorp expected the takeover bid to be approved and then it was not. Cabinet said, 'Surprise!' We had the same thing with Holden. We know what was intimated to Holden: if the workers cut their wages and the company played ball then it would have a shot at getting assistance. The minister came down and toured the plant, and there was all this talk about twisting the Treasurer's arm to get a few shekels—and, surprise, the Treasurer dared GM to leave.

Now we have Qantas. We have the four principles set out there for everyone to see—a whole lot of dilly-dallying. Watching those opposite is a bit like watching Kabuki theatre. You have them all appearing on the pages of the Financial Review trying to out-tough each other. I look forward to the member for Reid getting in there: get something nice and dry, cut penalty rates, muscle up, Mate. That is the way to get on the front bench with this crew.

We have this internal debate going on behind the foggy glass of this government. There is lots of movement. You cannot quite tell what is going on. It must be very bewildering for corporations that are seeking support. The ethanol industry must be pretty worried at the moment. But we then have Qantas: surprise! Cabinet has made a different decision; the Prime Minister has made a different decision. That is very bewildering, I think, for corporations in this country. They do not know what to expect. We have mixed messages and a divided cabinet. It is divided in the sense that those opposite are willing to play out their divisions in public, not clearly but unclearly, through the pages of the Financial Review and through the Australian. And just when you think there might be a predictable decision, you get unpredictability. One minute the Prime Minister is dry and the Treasurer is wet; the next minute the Treasurer is wet and the Prime Minister is dry. You cannot predict what they will do. They say they are for small business but they are upping small business taxes.

The question will be a very clear one at the next election. It will be jobs versus unemployment. Make no mistake about it, particularly in the southern states. That will be the choice, I think, in the election. It will be security versus insecurity. It will be wages growth versus cuts to penalty rates, because we all know that is where they are going to go. That is a part of the austerity package that this government will bring to us. It will be a choice between growth and austerity, and it will be a choice between Shorten and Abbott, and a very different set of priorities.

Labor will always be for a growing economy, security at work and security for an expanding middle class. I know small business gets talked about a lot in this building. We did a lot of practical things to help small business—particularly in taxation—versus those opposite, who will peddle insecurity, who will peddle cuts to penalty rates, who will peddle a cut in demand, and who will peddle a terrible experiment in austerity that has been tried in the rest of the world and has been found to fail.

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