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

When you comb through the spin and the smug self-satisfaction and all of the slogans that we hear from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer during question time, one thing becomes abundantly crystal clear: those opposite don't have the faintest understanding of what this recession means for real people in real communities. They just can't grasp that recessions are about whether or not the people of this country can put food on the table and school shoes on their kids' feet, whether or not they can pay the rent or pay off the mortgage, and whether or not their kids get the opportunities that a First World, first-rate country like ours promises to provide. That means recessions are about jobs. And for a million Australians, for 2½ million people who are looking for work or looking for more work, for 160,000 people who are expected to join the unemployment queues between now and the end of the year, for everyone worried about losing their jobs or being asked to work many fewer hours, this is a jobs crisis. For the local people spoken about in this House today, this is a jobs crisis. This is a job's crisis for Elizabeth from Diamond Creek in the member for Jagajaga's electorate; for Mark from Carrum Downs in the member for Dunkley's electorate; for Adam from Lethbridge Park in the member for Chifley's electorate; for Mark and Felicity in Geelong; and for Brian from Lugarno. For all of these Australians who want do the right thing and provide for the people they love, this is a full-blown jobs crisis.

If only those opposite stood up for workers as our members have today in question time, if only they understood and acted on the legitimate anxiety that exists in all of our neighbourhoods right around Australia, and if only they grasped that, in a recession as deep and damaging as this one, this House's first responsibility is to ensure that nobody is left out and left behind by government. Our responsibility is to try and step in and to provide some job security, while the private sector is not yet galloping as we'd like it to, and ensure that we don't sacrifice people to this recession by allowing this spike in unemployment to solidify and to concentrate in communities like mine and many others, and to cascade down through the generations. But that's precisely what this government is inviting by getting JobKeeper wrong by cutting it while unemployment's rising; by getting JobSeeker wrong by cutting it before the economy is ready; and now by getting JobMaker hiring credits wrong as well.

It says everything that you need to know about those opposite that they are digging in now to prevent us ensuring that employers don't sack workers over 35 in order to replace them with younger and cheaper workers. They didn't dig in on pandemic leave and they didn't dig in on all these things that would have been crucial during this pandemic, but they'll dig in to make sure that there is an incentive to sack workers and they won't step in to prevent that happening. As the member for Gorton said in his contribution, all along we've tried to be open minded about hiring credits for younger workers. We've tried to be constructive. We've tried to help the government get it right. We've been conscious all along that, on earlier occasions—the Restart Program for workers who are over 50, for example—they've got some of these labour market programs horribly wrong, and we genuinely want to prevent that happening. The Restart Program was horribly undersubscribed, and people were out of work three months after they participated in the scheme. We want to avoid that.

We've said all along that we've got at least three concerns with this. We've said that more like 45,000 workers will be supported rather than the 450,000 the Treasurer wrongly claimed again today. We've said that 928,000 workers on unemployment benefits over 35 are excluded from this program, while not getting the tax cuts and having JobKeeper cut—all of these things at once. And we haven't been convinced that enough has been done to prevent the sacking of those workers who are over 35 years old. What the government's refusal to accept those sensible amendments that we have moved really means is that this is no longer an accidental consequence of this legislation; this is a deliberate consequence of this legislation. No spin or marketing can obscure that fact or this fact: that this government mouths focus group platitudes about job security while the decisions that they take actually undermine job security. They say again and again that this government has people's back. Today they say to the workers who are over 35 in this country that they are going to stab them in the back with this refusal to support our amendments. We will fight for those workers, their family and their jobs. We are the party of those who work, those who want to work and those who are left out and left behind in this recession.

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