Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week in this parliament we saw a very strange sight indeed—shocking, even, to those who might have observed parliament or Australian politics for the last decade or more. We saw an Australian government led by a prime minister behaving like an adult, who brought together leaders from right across the country in the national interest. Now, this shouldn't be something to remark upon. It should be the ordinary business of government. But what we've seen after a decade of dysfunction and division from those opposite has left the country in a serious, precarious situation in terms of the economy, the budget and the big national challenges. So we saw business leaders, union leaders and experts actually listening to professors who spend their lives thinking about these things. Workers were sitting down in the same room, listening to each other and talking about the big national challenges.

I was there for the first part of the first day, and, talking to leaders from right across the country, I found that the overwhelming emotion was relief—relief that the dreadful Morrison government was gone and that there was a government that was actually interested not just in listening to them but in bringing people together in a civil way, to hear different perspectives, powerful perspectives. You saw leaders of big business sitting in the room and listening to the perspectives of the vulnerable. That should be ordinary business of government, but Australia lost its way under the previous government.

The big national challenges are serious, though. We heard our economy—the budget—faces crisis. There are record levels of inflation, falling real wages for the last decade, and a skills shortage crisis exacerbated by $3 billion of cuts to TAFE, training and apprenticeships under the previous government—

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