Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to commend the Shadow Minister for Trade for raising this motion today, a critical day when the Reserve Bank has dropped the cash rate to all-time lows. As she indicated, it is not because the economy is in a position of strength but as a reflection of the weakness of this economy. I will argue today that this motion should be supported because this government has sat on its hands for seven years, which places us in a position of far greater weakness than we ought to be in when we face the inevitable economic shocks that arise. When shocks do arise, often with some warning, this government does not respond in a timely fashion.

Let's firstly look at the state of our economy. Those opposite—the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and even some of those who have spoken today—come in here and pat themselves on the back every day of every sitting week, repetitively misquoting and misrepresenting economic statistics. If we look at a series of comparator economies, we find that those opposite can only claim our economy is doing well when they use aggregate figures—when they count up the number of jobs being created or look at gross domestic product in aggregate terms. When you reduce economic figures to per capita terms—what really matters to people—you find that our performance is far worse than those opposite are willing to concede.

They will say, for example, 'Our economic growth in aggregate terms is faster than Japan,' without telling anybody that our population growth is two full percentage points faster than Japan. When you look at it in per capita terms, our GDP per capita growth is lower than Japan's. There are any number of tables out there showing that we drop down the table dramatically when you look at us in per capita terms.

So let's look at economic statistics that matter to real people in real terms. What about wages growth? It is the lowest on record. What about labour productivity growth? It is going backwards for the first time ever. Let's look at how households responded to the first tranche of tax cuts. Twenty-five per cent of it was spent, according to bank estimates. That's far lower than any economic modellers had estimated. Let's look at unemployment and underemployment. Those opposite will occasionally compare our unemployment figures with some other comparable countries, but what they don't acknowledge is that underemployment in this country is going through the roof. It's over eight per cent and climbing, and in some areas is more than 10 per cent. And labour under-utilisation in some regional areas of Australia is nearly 20 per cent, or one in five workers who aren't being given the opportunity to use their talents. More importantly than that are the structural problems in our economy where many people are not earning enough, even from their main job, to put food on the table and are being subjected to worse and worse insecurity in the workplace because of the uneven laws that this government has put in place and won't reform. So the economy, for seven years, has been lacklustre and, in many key respects, worsening.

What we also find is that we have seen a number of negative shocks to the economy, but we have seen warnings given to this government that this government has not acted upon. Let's look at the bushfires. We had fire experts begging to meet with the Prime Minister months in advance of this terrible fire season. He wouldn't meet with them. They had a number of practical policies which they wanted the Prime Minister to consider. Moreover, once we had the fire season, this government has been all too slow to respond.

We've had question time after question time where this government fails to answer questions about people who are not being given benefits. The bushfires was a classic example. Coronavirus looks like being another example. We have had weeks and weeks now where the world has become aware of a growing risk of a pandemic. What is this government doing? It is sitting on its hands, week after week after week. Presumably all this government is doing is hoping it can squeeze a surplus, so it's going to wait until the budget, which will be four full months after there were well-disclosed risks arising in the global economy. This government, yet again, is sitting on its hands.

This government's economic mismanagement takes two forms: year after year it does nothing when we need productivity reform and we need structural reform, and, then, when we actually have risks that arise—like the bushfires, like the drought, like the coronavirus—this government does not respond in a timely fashion to warnings. We've put forward a willingness to discuss all sorts of policies with the government such as targeted tax relief, an increase in Newstart, infrastructure investment and business tax incentives. They don't want to talk to us. We have said we would sit down in a constructive way. As the shadow minister for trade has said, we have supported trade initiatives that have benefited this economy. We would support timely measures that this economy needs in the face of coronavirus. We shouldn't wait till the budget.

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