Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary week in Australian politics. The party that has campaigned for 13 years against debt and deficit has delivered the biggest deficit and the most astronomical debt in our nation's history—not by a little bit, but by a lot. You'd expect that if you were going to rack up a trillion dollars in debt you'd be able to deliver a little bit of vision for the nation. What we saw yesterday was a trillion dollars worth of debt but not 10c worth of vision for the country. Unemployment is going up. Between now and Christmas, an additional 160,000 Australians are going to find themselves in the unemployment queue. You'd expect, if that were going to happen, the government would be doing something to help support them, but at the very time that unemployment is going to reach its highest point in over a decade, they're cutting support for the unemployed, and snapping back to $40 a day.

The chronic neglect in our aged-care system laid bare by the royal commission remains. The cost of child care, which is perhaps the biggest barrier to improving the participation rate and getting women back into the workforce, remains. And older workers are left more vulnerable because of a poorly designed wage incentive scheme. I heard the Assistant Treasurer say a moment ago that somehow our criticism of this point means that we're against younger workers. They have missed the point completely. What they have done is pit one group of workers against another. The job of a government with a vision for the country is to unite the people and bring the country together. What they have done is pit one group of workers against another, and they can't even see it. There's been lots of money spent and lots of debt racked up, but there is no vision for the future and no path forward. You'd think a government that racked up a trillion dollars worth of debt could do something about our roads and our infrastructure in this country. There is a trillion dollars worth of debt but, if you look at the state of New South Wales alone, not one cent has been spent on roads south of the Engadine McDonald's. It's a travesty.

I want to say something about the manufacturing industry. I come from a region with a proud history in manufacturing. We were led to believe before the budget that there was going to be some big announcement and a great step forward for Australian manufacturing. Little did we know that this was just going to be another one of the Prime Minister's marketing opportunities. Sure, he knows where the Port Kembla Steelworks are. He went down there for a photo-op and made an announcement that had nothing to do with the Port Kembla Steelworks and had everything to do with a town 200 kilometres to the north. This guy is a marketing genius but has absolutely nothing to deliver when it comes to substance.

I want to talk about the future of the steel industry. We are a trillion dollars in debt, but there is no vision for the future of the steel industry. Australia is the largest exporter of iron ore in the world.

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