Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to reflect on the contribution of the member for Monash and the member for Barker's comment. The member for Monash came here in 1990, and the member for Barker started high school at that time. In 1990, I was an 11-year-old child working onsite for my father as a concreter—something I wouldn't recommend to other children out there! But, in rising to speak in support of the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Self-Employment Programs and Other Measures) Bill 2022, I think back to that time, and it really highlights why this is something that is very important to me.

Although I can assure you that I didn't really appreciate having to work with my father every weekend or every holiday—it was simply the expectation of a small business that I'd be there pushing a wheelbarrow, helping along—I look back at it, and I realise just how lucky I was to get that take-off ramp into employment from an early age. I was lucky to understand at a very, very early age—before I could possibly articulate it—the value that I could bring to others and to a community by being involved in the workforce. There were probably even values that I was building in myself.

I was doing nothing more than pushing a wheelbarrow half filled with concrete—if that—alongside my father, trying to prove that I was a big and strong concreter like him and the rest of the gentlemen there. But what I was really doing was getting an understanding of reward for effort at an early age. I don't know what I was first paid. In fact, I don't think I was paid early on, and I'm probably getting my father into trouble in some sort of IR form here, but that was how we worked. We got on, and, as time went by, I was able to maintain a wage. I'm paying small tribute here to my father, but that ability to understand that at such an early age was vital to everything that's followed for me. I know that, if I spoke to many others in this place or in the good electorate of Groom, there would be other people who had that benefit.

As grateful as I am for that, my father was also an employer of many other people, and I remember working side by side with a gentleman by the name of Dean Bachelor. He was a country lad who came up from Warialda looking for a job. He was 18, and my father decided to teach him how to be a concreter. Back then there was pretty good money to be made in concreting, and I understand there's pretty good money to be made now. It wasn't a bad job. Dean was able to learn the skills of the trade not just to be able to be a labourer but to be able to finish jobs. He progressed and he came up. He went from being a guy who had a lot of energy and enthusiasm to being someone who had skills and the ability to earn money and to keep a family, and he went on, actually, to take that. After working for my father, he worked in excavator equipment hire and became quite a good truck driver. I'll be down later on this year to see him at the Lights on the Hill monument, in your very electorate. I recall the values that first job provided him. It's so important to focus on them.

The third anecdote I'd add to this trilogy is how important, how crucial, work can be to someone. I was at the Oakey mine, the New Acland Coal Mine, recently talking to a dear old friend, Dave O'Dwyer, the general manager out there. He reminds me how different life was when we both graduated as mining engineers. There were no jobs for mining engineers at the time. The cycle was in its nadir. It was fantastic to watch him get the opportunity to become a general manager—not through direct employment. He became a truck driver. That was the job available to him. By taking that job, it gave him a world of experience he wouldn't have had otherwise. It broadened his capabilities and was a key stepping stone on his path to assuming the role that he has.

In all these ways, this bill speaks very much to the heart of these coalition values that we hold so dear, that the best form of welfare is a job. The best thing we can do for someone is to teach them how to fish and to give them the understanding of their value as a person. I think that's an important point to make. When we talk about employment, we talk about what we're able to achieve by helping people into employment. We're not talking about businesses or employment figures; we're talking about the impact on people, on their lives, their families.

I would reflect that this is not just an Australian trait. I had the pleasure of sitting with quite a few leaders of the local Syrian community who've chosen to make Toowoomba their home. What astounds me is that the first thing they want to tell me, when they come in, is how many of them are employed. It's a joy. You see the pride on their faces, talking about how their community has come in, got jobs in Australia, and they're committing. They want to be part of this great opportunity that's before them. Whether it's young children coming in or Syrians having to change their jobs to fit the opportunities here in Australia, they're so proud of this opportunity to build their lives, to become strong, contributing members of society.

A job is what gives a person dignity, a sense of purpose, a way of providing for themselves and their family. I think it's a value for us, to have some humility in that and understanding that, when we talk about people who need this little bit of help that these programs provide, we're talking about people who are but a hair's-breadth away from us, in many cases. I gave the example of how fortunate I was to have that early job. But that opportunity isn't for everybody. I acknowledge that, and I think we should all have a sense of humility. I think it's important that we provide that assistance to help people come into employment, to reap the benefits of it.

It's quite right that we have programs like this that are built upon so much work from both sides of the House. Previous governments of either persuasion have seen fit to pour energy, effort and thought into this. What we're trying to do here is to continue this, because it is so vitally important. It is probably the issue on the lips of most Australians at the moment. Addressing costs of living is clearly there, but it's also about how we provide enough workers for our workforce to see through these challenging times in front of us.

I was recently at the Cambooya pub, the Bull and Barley, talking to staff there about how difficult it was to get someone to run the pizza ovens. It seems like that would be such an easy thing to fill, and it simply isn't. Just finding people to come out and do that work is incredibly difficult right now. That extends everywhere. I think the member for Barker made the point on immigration. We often talk about skilled immigration. Seen in a broader context, there are entry levels, ramps, into employment at every level at the moment. We need to see that provided, and I'm encouraged by the government's statements on this that this is an area where we can provide some relief.

The New Enterprise Incentive Scheme is helping people go beyond just securing employment, supporting them to move off income support by creating their own jobs. What we're seeing is the opportunity here to provide the market with more options. Of course, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution for people who are looking to come out of unemployment, be it short term or long term. It's fantastic to think that the ability to start a job creates the ability then to employ others—to give others the opportunity and the benefit of employment.

I want to speak to why this is so important to me. I've seen the impacts of long-term unemployment. I was in the UK during the GFC, and I watched the impacts that played out across a number of sectors. Entire industries floundered and fell apart. People who had every reason to expect long-term employment had it taken away from them by factors completely beyond their control. I know we saw that in Australia; I'd argue there was a stronger impact in the UK. The comparison I would make is to anyone who's had the unfortunate experience of having to do mass lay-offs on a mine site and seen very good workers being told there's no longer a job for them. It's very, very difficult. I think back on my own workforces and the impact on mental health and physical health that follows periods of long-term unemployment. It's very, very important for us to address that and make sure that we're doing everything we can to help people out of that.

It would be appropriate to give some praise to a group in my electorate, Base Services, a wonderful initiative run by Nat and Tiff Spary. The entire focus of Base Services is helping people who may have had some challenging backgrounds—who may have had a lack of educational opportunities, who in some cases have come out of prison and in some cases have had drug abuse issues—and giving them a pathway back into employment. I've been absolutely blessed in my time as the member for Groom to be provided the opportunity to sit and speak with these groups as they go through their training. Just the other night, I was at the graduation ceremony for their hospitality cert I students. It's a starting point for these guys to come into employment. What Base Services does is absolutely fantastic. It doesn't just give them training; it gets them on the job and gets them into employment immediately, so they come out the other side with a diverse range of skills. Of the 15 people who went into the program at the start of this year, 14 have graduated. At the graduation ceremony the other night, 12 of those already had jobs. It's a great example of how investing in people works.

Even better, at the graduation ceremony I had the opportunity to talk with a young man—I won't mention his name—who had entered the program having come out of prison previously. He talked about what employment meant to him—how it had changed his life. One of the things he'd been worried about was that, coming into employment, he'd have to leave Toowoomba, where his former associates were, to start a new life. But what he found was that with employment he was surrounding himself with like-minded people. He was giving himself the opportunity to very much take control of his own life. It was absolutely fantastic to hear him talk about how he'd been able to find accommodation, how he'd been able to set himself up with a car and how, through employment, he'd been able to provide further educational opportunities for himself.

I think this is why we on this side of the House hold these truths to be so important. What we're talking about is what our American cousins would label the pursuit of happiness—the ability for people to find value in themselves, to build value in themselves and to seek reward for effort from that. I'll draw my contribution to a close at that point.

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