Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

Listening to the member for Cooper, you would think that everybody on this side demonised unions and the role they play in the workplace. That's not so. I was a member of a union—the Australian Journalists Association and, later on, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance—for 21 years. I didn't need to be a member of the union for the last 11 of those years, because I was the editor of the Daily Advertiser and the Riverina Media Group at Wagga Wagga, but I chose to maintain my membership. I appreciate, understand, recognise and acknowledge the role that trade unions play in Australia, and I think many, if not all, members on this side do too.

But militant unionism, unnecessary strike action—some of the things that unions do—are the sorts of things that really make things hard, particularly for small business, and that's what we object to. Everything is okay, but in balance. I certainly acknowledge that, and I certainly acknowledge the role that unions no doubt played at the Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra last Thursday and Friday. It was good that unions were represented. Sometimes I think the CFMEU go way, way too far and they could very well pull their heads in—and stop the donations as well, to the Labor Party. But the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 is important, as the member for Cooper just acknowledged. I know that is true in regional Australia at the moment, and I know it was mentioned at the summit.

I appreciate the fact that the Leader of the Nationals, the member for Maranoa, was present and took part. I was pleased that he did so. You've got to be at the table to hear what's going on, and I appreciate the fact that he contributed to that. I also acknowledge why some others didn't and understand their reasons for not doing so. Indeed, I hope it wasn't just a talkfest. I hope, as the member for Cooper no doubt does, that we get some meaningful action not just on jobs and skills but, indeed, on the vacancies that exist in regional Australia at the moment. It's critical that we fill those roles, especially as we approach what will be another bumper harvest for many farmers in the Riverina, the Central West and elsewhere in regional Australia. This is potentially their third bumper harvest in a row. I know that many companies, large and small, are doing everything they can to prepare for such a harvest. Indeed, GrainCorp is building bigger and better infrastructure around the countryside. Many others besides are doing likewise in preparation for what is going to be a considerable tonnage of grain. But we do need to find the workers to help harvest those crops. It's not just grain but fruit, and stock are realising record prices at saleyards. Abattoirs, of course, are always very busy around the countryside. The role that regional Australia plays in feeding and clothing our nation and many others besides is considerable, but we can't keep doing it if we don't have the workers.

Tonight here in Parliament House we're going to see the annual AgriFutures dinner. In particular it's a celebration of the role women play in regional Australia. It's an increasing role, I have to say, in that they're filling many of the roles once occupied only by men. I acknowledge all of the wonderful state and territory finalists in the national award. I well recognise the 2019 AgriFutures Rural Women's Award national winner, Jo Palmer, from The Rock, for the role she continues to play with Pointer Remote Roles, a company she established to link up people and vacancies. It's playing a vital role in regional Australia, and no doubt it will continue to do so.

I talk often to Kim Houghton from the Regional Australia Institute—a body that, I acknowledge, started in the Gillard years—which plays an important part in advocating for and on behalf of regional Australia. Just the other day I received my weekly text from Mr Houghton, who indicates that, according to the most recent Regional Australia Institute data, regional job vacancies are now at a record-high 86,900 advertised jobs in July 2022. That's a 24.7 per cent increase on the same time last year, and this is significant. The Regional Australia Institute's Regional Movers Index measures the latest data on the movement of population to regional areas from capital cities. Once upon a time it was always regional people, often our best and brightest, going to the capital cities to look for work—to look for opportunities. Now it's the other way around. Millennials continue to make up the biggest proportion of people moving to regional areas from capital cities. That's a good thing, but, of course, we've got to find the housing for them; we've got to find the rental properties for them. I acknowledge the shadow minister at the table and the role that he played in helping to do just that in the last government.

Net migration to regions remains 30.2 per cent higher than two years prior to COVID-19. COVID-19 taught us a couple of things, and I know Prime Minister Albanese often says that it taught us that we have to make more here in Australia. I acknowledge that. Certainly, whilst I appreciate the member for Cooper indicated a desire to manufacture more in Australia, we're already doing a lot in that regard, and a lot of it often doesn't get recognised. A lot of it often just goes straight through to the keeper, because great news stories don't always make the front page, and actually making stuff in Australia doesn't always make the pages of the papers—more's the pity.

But the other thing that COVID certainly taught us is that we can do anything, anywhere, as far as meetings are concerned. People can have an input in the boardrooms without having to physically be in a capital city, in a central business district, in a high rise in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane or another metropolitan centre in Australia. You can do it from wherever you are in regional Australia, whether you're in Manangatang or Mangoplah. You can Zoom in. None of us even knew what Zoom was prior to COVID, but we politicians certainly all know this now, because we're now safe from nobody! Everybody wants a telepresence meeting! And, of course, as the good MPs that we are, we make that possible; we make ourselves accessible. You can Zoom in from anywhere in regional Australia. Thanks to the telecommunications funding that the Liberals and Nationals put in place around regional Australia, you can have access to those boardrooms to make sure that you can have your say and make your voice heard.

The government has said it will honour the Australian agricultural visa agreement established between the former coalition government and Vietnam. This ag visa and these sorts of arrangements are so important in filling that vacancy gap I mentioned earlier. The government's approval of this will no doubt come as a relief to growers and producers throughout my electorate who have been affected by the workforce shortage. It's not the jobs and the skills, necessarily; it's the vacancies. Skills are important, of course, but we need skilled and unskilled workers. We hear different figures, but we are somewhere in the order of about 90,000 backpackers short of where we would normally be.

The difficulty with that is that many of the backpackers left Australia when COVID first hit our shores, and much of the decision and desire to come to Australia is based on backpackers going back and telling their friends what a great time they had in Australia—'Get over there; it's fantastic. You can work in a farm, work in a factory, work wherever and earn your money.' Often, most or many of them go on a holiday just prior to leaving our shores. It's fantastic. They do the work and then they spend all their money here. They have a great time. They go back home and tell their friends. And they come from the Americas. They come from Europe. They come from all over. But the trouble was when they left, because we had two years of planes being grounded, largely through lack of international flights. That was sensible, that was practical and that was necessary, but we did it and we stopped that dialogue between our backpackers. Subsequently, even though Australia is still a great place, and even though we've still got many vacancies, the backpackers aren't readily coming back. We hope they will.

Earlier this year I visited a factory called Apollo Fabrication in Young. Young is known as the cherry capital of Australia, and well that might be. I think they grow the best cherries in all of Australia. Others might disagree, but it's a local tradition and I'm biased, so let's just say that. The operations and sales directors of Apollo, Caleb and Nathan Jackson, told me that the company had been involved in manufacture for some of the most iconic buildings in Sydney—the updates to them, the refurbishment of them and the new infrastructure there. I mention particularly Mascot airport and the Sydney Cricket Ground. When I visited this factory at Young, 14 of the approximately 50 employees were apprentices, great young people who are doing wonderful things for this company. Apollo is committed to investing in regional areas and employing from regional areas. I mention this because it is just one story, one little snapshot, of what we are doing as far as manufacturing right here in Australia. If the current government can do more of that, well and good. I will support that because it will promote Australian manufacturing.

The budget delivered in March by the former coalition government sought to continue to support jobseekers and young people, and it certainly achieved that goal. At the time, we already had 3,765 apprentices in the Riverina, and new measures in that budget, with expanded wage subsidies, were designed to lead to more opportunities for apprentices and trainees, and it worked. It worked and it will continue to work. The national unemployment rate decreased to 3.4 per cent in July on the back of the policies that we put in place, the work that we did and the many job vacancies that were available because of the economic policies that we'd implemented. This is so important. We had an unrivalled record in creating job opportunities for people, in giving them the skills and the job opportunities. If Labor can empower the country to do even more then that's got to be desirable too, because we want our people, particularly our young people, in work.

We want to give our seniors the opportunity to keep their payments and do more work if they feel they want to or need to, so that they have that choice. I encourage that. I can well remember the former shadow Treasurer, now the Treasurer, saying that we would be looked upon as having succeeded or not in the pandemic by the jobless rate in Australia. Well, by that measure, we succeeded. The work that we did during the pandemic to ensure that people remained in work, that people had the opportunity to take a job if there was one to take, and, of course, to get the health outcomes led us to being rated No. 2 in the world according to the Hopkins research index. That is something to be proud of. I know Labor will go around besmirching and demonising what we did as a government, but rest assured that when it came to jobs, skills and filling vacancies, on those parameters, we absolutely succeeded. Of course, the efforts we made to make sure that we kept Australians safe and healthy during the first global pandemic in a hundred years will be the measure by which we are judged in the future. What we did to keep Australians safe, what we did to avoid losing tens of thousands of people—because that was the prediction—I think is something that the Morrison government should be very proud of. JobKeeper alone saved 700,000 jobs. I feel it is a great pity that the former member for Kooyong is no longer in this chamber. There was a record high of 220,000 trade apprentices. Over three years, some 1.1 million jobs were created post the pandemic arriving on our shores.

I hope the Jobs and Skills Australia Bill 2022 and the Jobs and Skills Australia (National Skills Commissioner Repeal) Bill 2022, if passed, succeed, because we want those opportunities, particularly for our young people. We want those opportunities for Australians. We want to make more goods here. We want Australia to be the best it can be, and if this legislation helps then that's all well and good.

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