Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise to speak on the motion put forward by my good colleague the member for Calwell. I have reflected on a number of the contributions made about this issue on both sides of this chamber. I take the contribution to this discussion by the member for Mayo around a number of pieces of work that have gone before this parliament in progressing what should be a goal of everyone in this House: to encourage employment and to encourage the dignity of work in this nation. I want to commend the former member for Monash, my predecessor, who I know had a genuine and abiding interest in this area. I know that in his last couple of years in this place he dedicated himself to the committee work that the member for Mayo referenced.

The coalition agrees that the dignity of work is fundamental and that work provides Australians with independence, financial security and a sense of purpose. In the last couple of weeks, in a number of mobile offices across my electorate of Monash, that's something I've reflected on in the conversations that I've had with families and with working people. They are most concerned, at the moment, with their sense of employment security, particularly under this government, particularly as real wages fall and particularly in regional areas like mine, where we have industries transitioning, and also for that quantum of not just large businesses in those regions but the ecosystem of small and family enterprises which sit beneath, among and alongside those large employers, who provide the lunches, do the dry cleaning and deliver the newspapers to those large companies.

This is an issue that is most important to regions like mine. While we are experiencing a flux in the economy right now and a change in employment demographics, now is not the time to be making major shifts in the way employment services are delivered in this country. We still have around 670,000 Australians unemployed, and underemployment remains close to six per cent. That is a big issue for regions like mine, where there are pockets of disadvantage and pockets of lower socioeconomic families who are really struggling right now. Underemployment is a key issue for them when you've got an economy where families really need to have two incomes. That is something that many families are most challenged by, and the consequences for that are intergenerational. It has an impact on children going to school and being able to enjoy and participate fully in sporting and other activities that their parents, at the moment, are really struggling to be able to afford.

The coalition's position is that reforms should be judged not just on whether they're delivering more people into sustained work. I think that is a key goal. And it is not just how ambitious or wide-ranging they appear to be on paper, because a well-functioning employment system requires a balance between meaningful support for job seekers but also clear expectations that people actively seek and want to accept suitable work which is available to them in their local communities. The state government in Victoria does not have a good record on this issue, and I raise the example of timber towns and timber communities in my region and regions across Australia, where, because of terrible decisions taken by the Victorian state government—I single out the minister Lily D'Ambrosio for her treatment of timber communities. You take a timber worker out of that town along with their partner, who happens to be a nurse at a hospital or a teacher at a school, and suddenly that school has lost a teacher, that hospital has lost a nurse, that town has lost another family that contributes economically but also socially to the vibrancy and sustainability of that town. I have real worries about timber towns and, more broadly, regional towns across Australia that have been treated very badly.

So, yes, I commend the intention of this motion, but the application of it and the lived experience of people in my electorate in regional communities don't always live up to the high hopes of this motion.

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