Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure for me to speak on this all-important topic of unemployment particularly youth unemployment. It is an issue in my electorate, and I know in many other rural areas. I will also talk about the related issue of skill shortages, which is a serious issue particularly in the eastern part of my electorate down the Hume Highway.

Given the topic of the MPI and given the enormous amount of money that the Labor Party claims to have spent on jobs and skill creation and skill development and the number of programs that they claim to have put into place, we might have expected that the track record of outcomes would be superb. So I spent a little bit of time looking at their actual track record between the time they got into government in 2007 and the time they left government in 2013 to see how they had gone.

I thought I would start with youth employment. Take note that between 2004 and 2008 there was 13 per cent growth in youth employment. Between May 2008 and May 2014, with the exception of a small uptick at the end—which we will ignore for now and which I will come back to in a moment—we saw an eight per cent reduction in youth employment across the economy. There was an eight per cent reduction across the time that Labor was in government. Shame!

At the same time we can look at youth participation rates in the workforce. It was running along merrily between 2004 and 2008, rising from about 70 per cent participation up to 71 per cent participation—nice work by the past Howard government. But from early 2008 through to the end of 2013, there was a reduction from 71 per cent to 66 per cent in youth participation—five per cent reduction in participation rates across the time of the last Labor government. Now they might say, 'That's all right. We were putting them all into training.' But what we also find is that the youth unemployment rate went from nine per cent in January 2008 to 12.4 per cent by the end of 2013. What a shameful record of youth employment and youth unemployment we saw from that last Labor government.

And when we dig little deeper, we find some hotspots. In western and north-western Tasmania they managed to achieve a 21 per cent unemployment rate from the Labor-Greens alliance, destroying jobs in Tasmania. In Cairns, it was 20.5 per cent, in North Adelaide it was 19.7 per cent, and in south-eastern Tasmania it was 19.6 per cent. Well done, Labor-Greens alliance!

They crow about the extraordinary work they did on training. Let us have a look at apprenticeships. Between 2007 and 2013 apprenticeship commencements fell by 37 per cent. No wonder we have got skills shortages in my electorate! By contrast, between 2001 and 2007 under the Howard government, we saw a 33 per cent increase in the numbers of apprenticeships—all that money, all those programs, and what did you achieve? Absolutely nothing. What a disastrous performance we have seen.

So how are we going? We have only had a short while but let us have a look at the facts. In the last four months the Australian economy has created 100,000 jobs. We hear from the other side lots of talk about a job loss here, a job loss there, but in total we have created 100,000 jobs. If you calculate that for the next five years, it works out at about 1.5 million jobs against our target of one million that we said before the election. So this is the track record we are already seeing from the coalition government. It is time for you to face the facts and the truth: your performance was absolutely abysmal and it is time for change.

Earlier speakers have spoken about the extraordinary range of programs we are putting in place which are targeted and cost efficient and, I am sure, will deliver the jobs and employment that the young people in my electorate want to see. We are a coalition for jobs. We are a coalition for employment and we are the party of opportunity for young people in stark contrast to those opposite.

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