Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. Given the global economic environment, will the minister detail for the House steps the government is taking to help Australians in their workplace?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Oxley for his question. As the Prime Minister has made clear, the global financial crisis is affecting growth and jobs right across the world, and that means it will affect growth and jobs in this country as well. A recession in the United States and a possible recession in Europe will impact on economic growth in this country, and unemployment in Australia will rise. It is a global crisis, but it has local consequences.

Whilst the International Monetary Fund expects that Australia’s economic prospects will be more resilient than those of other developed countries, both the government and the Reserve Bank expect the growth rate in employment to slow down in the period ahead. The most recent employment figures continued to show low unemployment, with a rate of 4.3 per cent and with 14,000 fewer people unemployed today than in November 2007. But, while this result is good, the government has always been upfront with the Australian people that a combination of slowing global growth and the effects of 10 consecutive interest rate rises under the Liberal government meant that we were likely to see a slowing in employment growth and a rise in the unemployment rate. The figures presented in the May budget indicated that unemployment was predicted to rise to 4¾ per cent by the June quarter 2009. The government does expect a moderate rise in that forecast, and the exact forecast will be finalised and published in MYEFO later this year.

This makes it really important—vitally important—that the government take a proactive role in these difficult times, and we are well placed to do this. The reason that we brought down a budget with a $22 billion surplus earlier this year was to give us a financial buffer to act for the future. The government is taking specific actions that matter. Our reformed employment services system is designed to better help the unemployed to find work, and last month we announced an additional 15,000 productivity places for reskilling the unemployed. These places come on top of the investment of 50,000 places already made this calendar year as part of an investment of $1.9 billion, and that takes the Rudd Labor government’s total commitment to 645,000 places over five years.

Importantly, too, the government has acted on fairness at work. One of the first acts—indeed, the first bill introduced into this new parliament when it met at the start of this year—was to take Australia through to the government’s Forward with Fairness policies. Specifically, that first act guaranteed that in workplaces around the country there is a safety net at work on which workers can rely—a safety net which cannot be stripped away. In good times and in bad times, Work Choices is bad policy. The sole or central aim of Work Choices was to enable the safety net to be stripped away. The government has already corrected this. Now no Australian worker needs to fear having the safety net stripped away. Work Choices is bad policy. It was bad policy in 2007. It would be particularly bad policy now if it were in operation allowing safety nets to be ripped away. The Rudd government is committed to fairness and to managing the economy in the interests of working Australians and their families.