Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

This month Australians learned that we as a nation are in recession for the first time in almost three decades, and this week the Morrison government showed its true colours. This was the moment when the Prime Minister and the Treasurer snapped back from 'we're all in this together' to 'you're on your own' when those opposite reverted to type—to the stale, failed policy of tough luck and cold charity, to the unfair and un-Australian notion that if you fall behind you get left behind.

Every member of this side of the House understands that recessions aren't about spreadsheets on a computer screen or some abstract technical jargon; they're about people, their jobs and their living standards. They're about whether people can afford to pay their rent or their mortgage or put food on the table or school shoes on their kids. They're about whether or not as a nation we can avoid the long-term unemployment which can turn into long-term, entrenched disadvantage and which risks cascading down through the generations in communities like the one I represent and those represented by this side of the House.

These are serious times, and people are understandably anxious. Hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their jobs. Just today, in the new data, we learnt that 750,000 jobs have already disappeared and that the impact of those job losses has been felt disproportionately by women, by younger workers and by people employed in industries dominated by casual and insecure work. Faced with this avalanche of reality about what this recession means for real people in real communities, those opposite are leaving those workers behind. They're leaving those workers in the lurch. They're leaving them hanging when it comes to important updates and reviews of the JobKeeper program and the budget update, which was promised for June but now, all of a sudden, has been pushed back beyond the Eden-Monaro by-election in July.

Three decades of continuous economic growth, which began under Labor and was defended by Labor when it was last most at risk, has now come to an end under those opposite because of this pandemic. On this side of the House we have always acknowledged the devastating economic consequences of this diabolical health crisis. We know that the pandemic arrived without warning, but the truth is that weakness in the economy did not. And, with us having acknowledged the role of this pandemic in ending that remarkable period of continuous economic growth, it's now time for those opposite to acknowledge three things. One is that we entered this crisis from a position of weakness because of seven years of incompetence, inaction and ineptitude which saw slowing growth and stagnant wages, business investment going backwards, productivity flatlining, record household debt and record public debt. We came into this crisis from a position of weakness. We weren't as strong as we needed to be in confronting something as serious as this. That's the first thing.

The second thing that they need to acknowledge is that stupendous errors have been made in the implementation of programs that should be doing more good in our economy than they are—and I'll come back to that. The third thing for them to acknowledge is that as it stands today, despite all the speeches and all the slogans, there is still no comprehensive plan for jobs and the recovery and the future of this country. Australians can't afford for those opposite—having bumbled the economy before, having botched the response—to bumble the recovery as well. Every Australian needs the government to do a much better job of managing this crisis and this recovery than they were doing managing the economy in the lead-up to this pandemic.

Perhaps the defining debacle of all of this has been the JobKeeper program. I'm referring in part, but not wholly, to the biggest-ever error made in any budget by any Treasurer in the history of the Commonwealth—the Treasurer's $60 billion JobKeeper blunder. That matters, because they turned people away on the basis the program was full only to cough up late on a Friday that it was actually three million workers short.

But that's not the only error those opposite have made with the JobKeeper program. They've left too many people out of it, and that means they've left too many Australians behind. They introduced it too late and it was too narrow, and now they risk withdrawing it too soon and too bluntly. The tragedy of this is that the JobKeeper wage subsidies could have been such an important part of dealing with this crisis.

The government actually started with the right instinct, which was to try and keep as many people connected to their employer as possible, and we supported that. We support it now. But what they showed is that you can't trust a bad government with a good idea. It's a good idea but badly implemented and badly communicated, and Australians are paying the price for it. And that's why even the Reserve Bank, including today in their minutes, have said multiple times that the economy is going to be weak for some time, so don't withdraw the support too soon. All that will do will mean that we've spent all of this money turning an April-May problem into a September-October problem so that people are in strife later in the year instead of earlier in the year.

In question time this week, we asked the government why, if the JobKeeper enrolments were down, they wouldn't admit that the jobseeker enrolments were up. We learned the answer from the committee chaired by Senator Gallagher, the shadow finance minister. Those opposite are all of a sudden pretending that JobKeeper and jobseeker are one and the same. The truth is, on the side of the House, we'd prefer people in work if they wanted to be in work. We'd rather people maintain that connection. The original instinct of this program was right; it's just been bungled in its implementation. We want people in work, and we prefer people in work.

When asked today about how many people would be sacrificed in September to this snapback that the Prime Minister is clinging to, all those opposite wanted to do was to talk about the Labor Party. It wasn't that long ago that this Prime Minister was saying, 'In this country, if you have a go, you get a go.' And now he's saying: 'You had a go. Off you go to Centrelink.'

What do those opposite say to all of those Australians who've been left behind by the incompetence and ineptitude of those opposite and sacrificed to their cold and cruel ideology? They say to the Australian people: 'Don't worry. I know you've lost your job, but our recession is not as bad as America's.' Their main defence—and we know what's going on in the United States—is: 'Don't worry. It's not as bad as what's happening in the US or Italy.' They say: 'Don't worry. We know you've lost your job, but it's not quite as bad as we originally feared.' It is for that family. It is for that breadwinner. It is for that community. Their defence that it's not as bad as the US or not as bad as they feared is cold comfort if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of Australians who headed off to lengthen the unemployment queues.

Just as having no plan before the crisis was a recipe for economic weakness, it is so too a recipe afterwards. The Prime Minister gave a speech yesterday which tried to do two things at once. It tried to argue this crisis will be with us for longer but that the support should be drawn out sooner. You can't have it both ways. He's got to pick which of his comments is true. It makes no economic sense for him to be talking up austerity at the same time he's pretending he's game for growth.

In serious times like this, we need a Treasurer who's up for the task as well. Instead, we get the butterfingers of Australian politics—the Treasurer who will always have his name on the first recession in three decades, the Treasurer who will always have his name on the biggest blunder ever made in a Commonwealth budget since Federation and the Treasurer who printed the mugs saying we are 'back in black' only to deliver the biggest ever deficits in the history of this nation. We need those opposite to do better.

The Leader of the Opposition has said rightly that Australians have a choice. The choice before all of us is whether we want to snap back to the worst elements of the economy before this crisis—all the insecure work, stagnant wages, flatlining living standards and record household debt—or whether we can go forward to something better, and that is the question before this parliament. We won't get anything better if those opposite continue to bungle JobKeeper, or if they fail to understand that this recession, on their watch, is about real people in real communities. We won't get there without a plan or without leadership, and those opposite are providing neither. (Time expired)

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