Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable the Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The government's failure to plan for the jobs of the new economy.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The problem for Australia at the moment is that we have a government with no plan for the future of jobs in this country. This has been a disgraceful week where the government has done everything but talk about jobs of the future. We saw the image of the Treasurer of Australia talking about the national account numbers yesterday and then declaring today, in a moment of hubris, that the worst is behind us and that this country is doing better than anywhere else in the world. The problem with his sunny optimism is that domestic income in this country is sluggish. Household savings ratios are down to a 6½-year low. Productivity is down. There are weaker earnings, wages are falling or are not increasing as much as in budget forecasts, and we have unemployment north of six per cent. This is a problem in this country. Instead of a high-skill, high-productivity, high-wage nation, we have the Liberal government of Australia leading us in the wrong direction.

The truth of the matter is that, since the budget was brought down on 12 May, the more and more we see of the budget, the more and more Australians are becoming worried about the future of this country. Their budget still relies upon the same old unfair cuts which marked their last budget. They are still relying upon massive cuts to the states—$80 billion to schools and hospitals—which will fatally undermine the ability of these states to deliver the outcomes that the states are expected to deliver to their citizens. We have seen the deficit of this nation double between two budgets and, when we asked the Prime Minister today in question time what he was doing about that, he had no answer. As usual with his answers in question time, they were masterfully irrelevant. Furthermore, we see this budget relying upon the lazy hand—the Prime Minister loves to talk about hands in pockets; we need to talk about the invisible hand of inflation in the pocket of every Australian—of bracket creep, pushing people into higher income brackets. That is the only way they fuel their budget. This is a country with a government with no plan for the future.

People know the real transition that is happening in this economy. We understand that, for the six years between 2006 and 2012, mining investment made a massive eight per cent of GDP. That has delivered some long-term benefits in terms of the volume of our exports in the future, but we are now returning to our 50-year mean in investment from mining and we need a replacement in our economy. The truth of the matter is that, for this country to have a plan for the jobs of the future, it needs to deal with the transition from the mining boom. What we need above all else in a transition from the mining boom is confidence. We need confidence that we have a Commonwealth government capable of leading us to the future. We have in fact a fourfold contraction in our economy in mining investment. That is like taking $100 billion out of the economic activity of Australia.

On budget night, Australians waited with some hope, I suspect, that the government would have a plan—and they had a plan of sorts. They had a plan that you could go to a second-hand car yard and to Harvey Norman and you will get a short-term stimulus to small business. I do find it funny talking about stimulus to those opposite. For years they tried to crucify Labor when we had to stimulate over the GFC. Last year, the government had swallowed the bible of Milton Friedman, and this year they seem to have swallowed the bible of John Maynard Keynes. The challenge, though, for Australians is that the government said one thing last year, telling Australians there was a debt and deficit crisis, and then this year they seem to be adopting some sort of mantle of economic Mahatma Gandhis to small business. We all know that their small-business package was basically a rip-off, a Bali knock-off, of what Labor was trying to do with small business. The Minister for Small Business is all about instant asset write-offs this year, but we know that last year and in the years before they repealed the instant asset write-off. Anyway, no matter how frustrated people are with the inconsistency of the government, we are prepared to support the small-business proposals. In fact, we had the ridiculous situation yesterday where the government voted against their own small-business package—remarkable.

The real issue is that Australians know that there is no path to surplus of any credibility with this government. It is a map which Burke and Wills could have used to find their way home, but it is not a map for the future.

Ms Butler interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith is not in her seat.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We understand that the real change going on in this economy is the transition from the mining boom to the non-mining boom. We also understand that we are fortunate to live in the neighbourhood of the fastest-growing region of the world. The world's centre of economic gravity is moving east at 140 kilometres each year. In the next 15 years, the world's middle class will more than double in size. Forty per cent of the consumption of the world will be in Asia. These are the issues of the future. The issues of the future that the government should be addressing are the rise of Asia and the impact of the digital age upon jobs, economic business and society in general. We have an ageing of the workforce and an ageing of the population, and that is a most important trend. We understand on this side of the House that the other big trend in the world at the moment is sustainability. That is climate change, for those on the other side who do not know what 'sustainability' means. These are the big changes. We also recognise that we need a more diverse economy and we must rely more and more on services in our towns and our cities.

These are the big questions. But, when we look at this pathetic imitation of a budget not designed to last 12 months, a budget held together with sticky tape and lacky bands, a budget which repudiates any attempt at economic reform—when spending is higher than at any time since John Howard—and a budget doubling the deficit, we see the problems that this budget has. This is a budget designed to save two jobs but not the jobs of the future for Australians.

Labor have an alternative and positive vision. We fundamentally believe that, if we improve our infrastructure, that is a lever that the Commonwealth can exert which helps improve and grow the Australian economy. We understand that public transport demand will double over the next 20 years. Public transport, for those opposite, includes buses, trains and trams. We understand that traffic congestion by 2031 will cost the economy $53 billion. We understand that we need to unlock the productivity of our cities through generational decisions on infrastructure, free of the tawdry politics of the government.

But we also recognise that another lever that the government of the day has is not just infrastructure; it is all to do with people. I am talking about half of the population when I say 'people'. I am talking about the equal treatment of women in our society. There is no doubt that reducing the gender gap in participation by 25 per cent would mean an extra 300,000 women in work by 2025—probably not on the front bench of the cabinet but in all other jobs! We believe that we have to do more to help the work-life-family balance for women.

That is why I was very disappointed that the minister for women—and, in case you do not know who that is, that is Tony Abbott—turned his back on his Paid Parental Leave scheme, and the government now have in their budget legislation propositions which say that working women who have negotiated conditions for their employment are double dippers. They have been called rorters; it has been called fraud. What the government have done by changing paid parental leave the way they have—you can no longer top up your scheme if you receive the national minimum—is make the national minimum the national maximum. They have lowered the glass ceiling in every workplace, and that takes considerable skill!

Of course, the government love a scapegoat. They get up in the morning and they say, 'Where's my scapegoat? I need a scapegoat before breakfast.' Then it is, 'I can't have lunch without a scapegoat.' And then, before dinner, it is, 'I want some more scapegoats—people to blame.' I tell you who they have attacked when they bagged public servants for having paid parental leave. They include the Federal Police. They love having a photo taken with the Federal Police; they just do not like paying them very well. The include Customs officers. They are the front line, as we keep hearing from these people opposite—just as long as they do not have babies. Then we have nurses. Heaven help a coalition minister if they ever get sick! There are CSIRO researchers: 'What would they know? What do they do?' And there are the people behind the counter at Medicare or on the phone at Centrelink. Do you know what is really interesting about them saying they are going after fat-cat public servants—you know, that dreadful rhetoric this government loves to use about the scapegoats? It has emerged today that 62 per cent of the people who are eligible for paid parental leave, the extra scheme, are in the private sector. What they have done is because they hate public servants so much. That is why they have done it.

That is why Labor fundamentally believe in the jobs of the future. Of course, it is not just about encouraging women to participate in the workforce, it is not just about building infrastructure; Labor's plan for the future is to educate our kids. That is why, unlike Tony Abbott, who does not have a clue what 'coding' is, we want every child in every primary school to learn coding. We want 100,000 kids to be able to do science, technology, engineering and mathematics at university. We want a smart innovation fund. We have a plan for the future: it is about skills, it is about infrastructure, it is about treating women equally. All this government is doing is working out who is leaking— (Time expired)

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would seem that the Leader of the Opposition has discovered the Net! All of a sudden, he is keen on technology. Previously, he was more interested in netball than the Net! Nevertheless, we welcome him to the field. He is a bit late to the field, but we welcome him, because we can all agree that the transformation to a knowledge economy is a major force affecting Australia's economy. According to Deloitte, in their report The connected continent, the digital economy was already worth $79 billion, or 5.1 per cent of GDP, in 2013-14. We can all agree that start-up companies are enormously important when it comes to job creation. According to the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard, a third of job creation in the business sector comes from young firms with fewer than 50 employees.

But the key policy question that the Leader of the Opposition needs to answer if he is prosecuting the case, as he asserts baselessly, of the government's failure to plan for the jobs of the new economy is: how are the things he is talking about going to solve the problem? How, with just one speech in reply to the budget, he can fix it all with lots of bad promises? He really faces three fundamental problems: firstly, Labor's deeply underwhelming track record in this area; secondly, his failure to recognise that there is an enormous amount going on, and the Abbott government have a plan which we are executing, we are actually doing things while the Leader of the Opposition is simply talking; and, thirdly, the ideas that he has come up with are, in many cases, half baked.

Let us look at Labor's poor track record. Let us talk about employee share ownership plans. There is nothing more important to innovative start-up companies in the technology sector than being able to attract and retain talent and being able to do so using the remuneration tools which are standard practice in the new economy around the world. In the United States, in Israel, in tech sector hot spots all around the world, it is vital to be able to offer your employees share options so that they can share in the upside of the company if it goes well, so that you can attract smart people away from the big corporates by giving them a share in the upside.

So, what did the Labor Party—this friend of innovation, this friend of the new economy, this champion of jobs for the future—do in those grim, dark days was, bizarrely, the Treasurer of Australia? What did Labor do? Labor deliberately changed the tax law to make it effectively impossible for start-up companies in the technology sector to use employee share schemes. They changed the tax treatment so that employees were taxed in the year in which the options were issued. Rather than it becoming an incentive, it was something employees ran away from, realising they would be hit with a big tax bill on options which might well be worthless—because Labor never understand the nature of risk in business. It is just not in their DNA.

Thankfully, after those grim, dark days there is light on the horizon thanks to the unyielding champion of small business, innovation and technology—the Minister for Small Business, the member for Dunkley, who I am delighted is in the chamber now, and who is an unflinching champion of reform in this area. The Abbott government is the friend of the technology sector. We have reversed the way the technology sector was betrayed by Labor in government. Let's have a look at Labor's approach when it came to funding cuts in science—in the 2011-12 MYEFO Labor cut $400 million over three years from students studying maths, statistics and science. In the 2012 budget, they cut a further $314 million over four years. Labor, in total, cut $1.3 billion from their own policies designed to encourage students to take up science and maths, and now the Leader of the Opposition expects to be believed, and expects to be taken seriously, when he has his late road to Damascus conversion on the question of boosting science, technology and maths.

Let us be clear—there is no disagreement. These are vitally important policy objectives. That is why the Abbott government has a comprehensive and well executed set of initiatives designed to stimulate innovation, designed to stimulate activity in the start-up sector, and designed to get more children and high school students to study engineering, maths and science in high school, and engineering subjects in university. A whole suite of measures were announced in last year's innovation and competitiveness statement. The Leader of the Opposition expects us to believe that he is onto something new, but he is well behind the game.

The Abbott government is getting on with this: $12 million was announced last year for improving education in the vital science, technology, engineering and maths subjects; $3.5 million is provided to ensure that all students have the opportunity to study coding and computer programming; there is some $7 million for innovative resources for maths; and $500,000 to introduce an innovative P-TECH school—with vocational education giving people the opportunity to pick up vital IT skills they can then use in the workforce. We have allocated $188 million in key growth areas—advanced manufacturing, food and agribusiness, medical technology and pharmaceuticals, mining equipment technology and services, oil, gas, and resources.

What is the key theme here? The key theme is connecting research with the private sector and with business, because we can all agree that we want as many jobs as we can possibly have, and as much economic activity as we can possibly have in the technology sector in innovation, but what we need is the private sector to be delivering those jobs. Government has an important role, but Labor, time after time, defaults to thinking that government can solve everything with the wave of a hand. Instead of Labor's misguided approach, we have a comprehensive set of measures from the coalition. Again, the Minister for Small Business is leading this work. We have committed to removing impediments from crowd-sourced equity funding so we can take advantage of the efficiencies of the internet to raise capital quickly for businesses. We have announced, just recently, in a joint announcement from the ministers for health, education and industry, a strategy to boost the commercial returns from research. So there is a clear and comprehensive set of measures from the Abbott government precisely designed to facilitate the transition of our economy, and to make sure that our economy continues to generate the jobs that we need for Australians as the technological transformation occurs—the transformation we can all identify and agree on.

Unfortunately, it is a lot easier to identify the issues than to come forward with a comprehensive and credible plan. It does seem that the Leader of the Opposition has fallen prey to the temptation to come up with a set of measures that sound good politically but do not stand up to a great deal of scrutiny. For example, we had this half-baked plan to write off the HECS debts of 100,000 students studying science, technology, engineering and maths. That sounded great, except it was not at all clear how much money was actually going to be allocated to it. Initially they said that it would cost $353 million. Then they changed their mind, to $45 million. None of those numbers are relevant because the credible estimate here is the estimate from the Department of Education—$2.25 billion. It was not even clear whether Labor were talking about 100,000 students—as they initially said—or 20,000 students, and we certainly never got a clear explanation as to how, of the 184,000 students who are presently studying these subjects, they would choose the ones who were to benefit from this reduction. It sounds great, but when you study the details it simply does not stand up.

We had the objective of increasing the numbers of students studying science and maths. Again, we can all agree on the objective, but when you dig into the details it seems that even the state Labor education ministers will not agree to the plan presented by the Minister for Education, under which there would be a transition over a five to ten year period to make one of science or maths compulsory in years 11 and 12. The Opposition Leader can come into the parliament and give a soaring speech on budget reply night, but it turns out that the practical details have not actually been sorted out with his Labor state counterparts and, because the Australian Education Union does not like the idea, the practicalities mean that a specific measure to encourage maths and science education have not been thought through.

We heard about the $500 million Smart Investment Fund. Again, it sounds great, but there is no explanation about how this is going to overcome the difficulties that the Innovation Investment Fund struck under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, when, of the three managers who were allocated funding, two of them had to hand back their mandate because they could not succeed in raising matching private sector funding. So let's be clear. We can all agree on the objectives, and the Abbott government has a clear plan across a whole range of fronts to deal with the transition of our economy. Sweeping statements not properly researched or substantiated are no substitute for the sustained action of the Abbott government.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this matter of public importance and to condemn this government's failure to plan for the jobs of the new economy. This is a failure that starts with this government's approach to education—a failure to plan for our schools, a failure to plan for our TAFEs and a failure to plan for our universities. In the long-term, we know that the jobs of the future depend on the quality of our education system today. In contrast to a complete lack of vision from those opposite, Labor in government had a clear plan to make sure our kids had the skills they needed to get the jobs of the future. After the biggest review of our schools in 40 years, we put in place the Gonski reforms. Australians liked what they saw. With nothing of their own to offer, even the Liberal Party recognised that Australians liked what they saw, and they jumped on board. The Prime Minister said during the last week of the election campaign that there would be no cuts to education, because he knew that cuts would be terribly received by the Australian people. Earlier, he promised an 'absolute unity ticket when it comes to school funding.' The now Minister for Education, the member for Sturt, promised:

So you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school …

But they never really meant it—and this year's budget locked in their $30 billion cuts to schools over the next decade. The consequences will be far reaching. By cutting education now, this government is failing Australians on the jobs of the future.

Even though we are not in government any more, Labor are still the ones coming up with the ideas. It is only Labor that has the vision to make sure Australia and Australia's kids are not left behind. In coming years, three out of four jobs in the fastest growing industries will rely on science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. When it comes to making sure our children have these skills—as even the member for Bradfield acknowledged in a soaring speech in the budget reply debate—the Leader of the Opposition has set out our ambitions: firstly, we will ensure that our children in primary and secondary school across Australia are learning coding—computational thinking and programming, the language of the future, so they do not just use technology but can make technology work; secondly, we will invest in the skills of our teachers, by upskilling 25,000 existing teachers so they fall in love with maths and science and can help their students do the same; thirdly, we will provide scholarships for 25,000 STEM graduates to study teaching; and fourthly, as the member for Bradfield outlined, we will provide over 100,000 HECS-free STEM degrees so that more people thinking about a university education choose science and maths as a profession.

Labor will not sit by and wait for the future to come to us. We will embrace it and we will ensure our children are able to make the most of it. In comparison, this is a government resolutely stuck in the past. All you need to do is look at their priorities. Estimates proceedings this week confirm they are planning to cut even more programs, including the maths and science olympiads,    Scientists and Mathematicians in Schools, the Australian Maths and Science Partnerships Program, and    improving the quality of maths and science teachers. The minister himself, as the member for Bradfield outlined, has been caught-out playing catch-up on maths and science after the power of the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply speech. Just last week he surprised the states and territories by saying that maths and science should be compulsory in years 11 and 12. Superficially, that is a very attractive proposition. The problem is, he has been immediately undermined by his own Liberal Party colleagues and by experts. The Western Australian Liberal education minister, Peter Collier, said only a couple of days ago:

… I'd be the first to object to the idea that we must make this compulsory.

Ian Chubb, the Chief Scientist, said:

… it is difficult to make these subjects compulsory, but they should be made so compelling that everyone wants to do them.

That is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply speech and the policies outlined in that speech do—try to make maths, science, engineering and technology qualifications as attractive as they possibly can be for young Australians so that they have skills for the future. This is why we are so committed to the education system—it is why we introduced the Gonski reforms; it is why we remain committed to a needs-based, sector-blind school funding system that really looks to the skills our children are going to need in the future. (Time expired)

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to be part of the jobs debate we are having here today. It is a sensible debate because the issue we are discussing is one of the most important and significant issues that this parliament has to discuss and will continue to discuss in the future. Jobs are our future and we need to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to set ourselves up for a future that is strong and that is prosperous, and that we are looking after future generations and making sure that they have the opportunity they deserve to go into worthwhile, rewarding employment.

When talking about jobs we really have to assess where we are, look at the jobs of today and see whether we can make some predictions about what the jobs of the future might be. Clearly that is very difficult—it involves quite a bit of crystal ball gazing because, if you take yourselves back about 10 years and you look forward to today, who would have thought back then that if you were going to put product onto the market you would be consulting with someone who could design an app for you, who could do search engine optimisation? It would have been impossible to determine that at that point in time. As we stand here now and we try and determine what the jobs of the future are, we can only look at not just past behaviour but also what is happening in the technology space—because that is where the development is going to be into the future. We know from a recent PwC report that it is estimated that 5.1 million jobs—44 per cent of current Australian jobs—are at risk from digital disruption over the next 20 years. That will be a massive impact on jobs here in Australia. This gives us an opportunity that we can take, that we can pick up and run with. We know that digital disruption is already happening; we know that it is going to continue to happen. We need to get on board and look at what the skills are that we will need for the jobs of the future. Clearly I am delighted that we are having such strong discussions at the moment about STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths; they are definitely the skills that we need for the future. International research is telling us that 75 per cent of the fastest growing occupations now require STEM skills or knowledge. This is clearly a key area for us and one that we must develop. PwC estimate that if we could convince just one in 100 people to shift into stem roles, this could increase our GDP by $57.4 billion over 20 years. So we know that we must be working in this area.

I think we all recognise, particularly everyone here in the House at the moment, that we have to become productive, we have to look at our modern economies, we have to look at joining business, scientists, educators and policymakers together so that we can make STEM a priority and work our way forward into the jobs of the future. We are committed to a coordinated approach to STEM from the government and to making sure that we work together to ensure the prosperity and the competitiveness that this country so desperately needs.

In my role as a the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science, over the last few months I have taken a very active role in STEM. I am fully aware that this is a complex problem. It is not a problem that has just one simple magical solution. It is important that we actually do the work to determine the problem. As I said, it is very complex. One of the key things we have to do is look at how we are going to influence students to willingly take on study in STEM subjects—and that is probably through influencing the key influencers. One of those key influencers is certainly the teachers—so we know that we need to do some work with teachers. We also need to influence the career advisers to make sure they are aware of the jobs for the future so that they can steer the students into the right paths. We know that we have to influence the principals because they are the ones out there promoting their students, their academic results. We do not want them encouraging their students to take an easy course simply because that will give them the best possible ATAR and OP. And we need to influence the parents because they are the ones at home with these kids encouraging them to get the best possible score to set themselves well for a tertiary education. So we have to make sure that we are making progress in influencing the influencers. That is step 1 in resolving this issue.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an extremely important matter of public importance before the parliament today, and it is a subject I have spoken on over many years in this parliament. My regional area of the Illawarra is at the very forefront of many of the challenges that face our economy as we transition to a much more complex requirement for skills and education needs. We also need policies to be in place to support communities like mine, and individuals in areas like mine, to be part of that transition and not be left behind as the economy changes.

It is very important that the Leader of the Opposition has put this on the agenda. What is sadly lacking from the government is any narrative and plan to actually position Australians well for the jobs that will emerge in the future so that we are competitive. This will take a number of initiatives. As the Leader of the Opposition outlined, it will take an investment in infrastructure, including the smart infrastructure of the future—fast reliable broadband—on which many people will build new jobs and new companies. It will also take an investment in people. I want to take on take the opportunity in my contribution today to talk about the vocational education and training sector.

There are many very useful reports put out about the emerging skills needs in our economy. I draw interested members' attention to environmental scans conducted each year by industry skills councils. I have a particular one here which is the Environment scan for the current year from the Innovation & Business Skills Australia industry council. Sadly, these industry skills councils who do this fantastic work have been defunded by the government. So I do not know how much longer we will continue to have this excellent research and resources made available to us.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What would industry know!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly, what would industry know! We have already seen AWPA, the national body that was doing the analysis of emerging skills and opportunities, disbanded last year. And now we are seeing the industry skills councils, with decades of experience sitting on their boards, defunded as well.

I want to take members to this year's Environment scan from IBSA. They say—and it is absolutely true:

The impact of technology broadens each year as it is felt in all aspects of business operations, all sizes of business and all industries. Customer service is being enhanced through data analytics which are providing complex analyses of consumer behaviours, paper based printing is being subsumed by mobile electronic options, finance and business services are operating anywhere and anytime using cloud based applications on a wide variety of devices. Nationally and internationally, convergence and collaboration are occurring in the workplace and between and within industries, suppliers and clients.

That captures the very significant change that is happening not only to the nature of businesses but to the way in which businesses are operating—not only in terms of their product innovation but in the changes to the systems and procedures that workers will have to be highly competent in to guarantee productivity and innovation in the businesses of the future.

In particular they outline six significant trends that are happening. The first is extreme longevity. Reskilling will be increasingly important for all workers in the future. The second is the rise of smart machines and systems, in particular through workplace automation. The third is the computational world, where everything will be converted to data. The use of that is critically important. The fourth is new communication tools—which we would all be familiar with—that engage individually and collectively at work and at home in new and innovative ways. The fifth is superstructured organisations where the forms of production and value creation are significantly changed. The sixth is a globally connected world.

I want to particularly make the point that the Environment scans of all of these industry skills councils make the point that the vocational education and training sector is at the heart of so much of the new skilling that will have to happen. Sadly, there was not a word in the budget about initiatives in this sector. It built on the back of $2 billion cut out of the sector at the last budget. You have to invest in the workers to enable them to be the innovators and to increase their productivity for the long-term future of jobs. (Time expired)

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to rise and talk on this matter of public importance. Labor are saying that it is about jobs for the future, and I agree: it is about jobs for the future. But it is not just about planning for jobs of the future; it is about delivering jobs of the future. That is what the coalition is all about: delivering practical schemes that will help business employ more local people. We saw under the six years of Labor more than half a million jobs—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why is unemployment going up?

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

member for Moreton, when you were in—half a million jobs lost in small business under Labor, and they want to talk about jobs for the future. I am glad to say that the coalition government is working to recover those jobs. To every person in my electorate of Petrie and right around this country, that is our No. 1 priority: jobs. We want to see more jobs for local people in our electorates. We are the only party in this parliament with a plan. We know that those opposite just have a plan for more debt and more taxes, unlike us.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You've doubled the debt.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member says we have doubled the debt. We will come back to that. Let's have a look at Labor's contribution when they were in power in relation to skilling. More than $1 billion was cut from apprenticeships between the 2011 and 2012 budgets. Labor failed to ensure that training led to real jobs. Instead, they funded training for training's sake. A review by Allen Consulting of Labor's signature $2.1 billion Productivity Places Program found it could not identify who had been trained, how many people had been trained or who had the contract to deliver the training. If that were in the private sector, the company would be broke. Labor was then forced to scrap the program before the last election. Throughout Labor's term, a partnership completion rates flat-lined at around 50 per cent.

Part of our plan is to, of course, balance the budget. I know that is a foreign concept for the Labor Party and the Greens and for everyone on that side of the House, but we have to balance the budget. Even the school kids up in the gallery understand that you must balance the budget.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

You say, 'We balanced the budget.' Where is your $6 billion in savings that you promised before the last election? You have not voted for one of them. Get your senators and get the Greens to support your savings. Do you know what? I do not hear about any savings from Labor. I have been sitting in this place for almost two years and there has not been one decent saving. I go to the only savings that you guys come up with. First, you want to tackle multinationals, which will save you $2 billion a year—we are running budgets of about $35 billion a year in deficits, and in the last eight years we have done that—which Joe, the Treasurer, is now addressing. What is your second saving? You want to hit superannuation. Have you thought at all about what superannuation will do to the social security budget 20 years from now? We are going to save heaps because everyone under 50 will have superannuation and they will not be on welfare. Think of the number of people in your electorate. Even if they put $30,000 a year away—and not everyone can do that—for 25 years, what do they have? They have $750,000 or something, minus 15 per cent in tax. You want to hit them more. Hands off super. It is not your money. You have a spending problem, Labor. You spend like drunken sailors. You have to rein in your spending. That is what you have to do.

What does the Leader of the Opposition say in this debate? He says, 'Oh well, household savings are down.' The deficit has doubled, yet he fails to pass his own budget savings. The Leader of the Opposition is not providing leadership to this country. He does not know how to create jobs. The best thing that Australians can do in 2016 is re-elect the coalition government.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

That is what we need: we need a coalition government re-elected for a second term, member for Moreton. That is what we need, because we have a plan. A lot of you guys are good guys and you want to see the best thing, but you have to make some savings. When you rack up spending, have a guess who pays for it. Businesses pay for it through higher taxes: through payroll tax; through carbon taxes. How does that help create jobs? Please, look at some savings. You have 12 months to think about it.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

About 200 or 230 years ago, there was a bloke called Ned Ludd. He was a bloke who smashed up some mechanical machines in a fit of passion, raging against the machine, and he inspired a movement called the Luddites—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it is not true that it is the National Party. They were apparently called Luddites. These were blokes who ran around the country in England burning factories and smashing up machines, all at the start of the industrial revolution. I was listening to this debate and thinking, 'Hang on a second. This movement hasn't finished yet. We've a new Ned Ludd: Tony Abbott—the Ned Ludd of Australian politics; the king of the Luddites. Remember, this is the bloke who said that the NBN was a $50 billion entertainment system. He is the guy who brought back the old Telstra copper network that John Howard sold last century. He is also the guy who thinks it is a great idea to give a knighthood to Prince Philip, but he thinks it is a bad idea to teach kids how to code in primary school. He does not get it. He does not understand how important this is, but also how simple and basic this is. Technology destroys some jobs and it creates new jobs. It has been happening ever since Ned Ludd, ever since the industrial revolution. The challenge for us here right across the country—not just politicians but industry as well—is to make sure that our people, the Australian citizens, have the skills that they need for these new jobs, for the jobs of the future. What are these new jobs? Most of them require STEM skills: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Seventy-five per cent of the jobs being created in Australia right now require STEM skills. That will only increase in the years ahead. The problem is that right now we are not producing enough people with those skills. That is why the Chief Scientist put out a report a few weeks ago saying that employers are having trouble finding people with the STEM skills that they need for the jobs right now, let alone in the future. When you look at the number of people who are being produced through our universities with STEM skills now, you can see why this is a serious issue.

Let me just give you a couple of statistics. In 2002 China produced half a million people with STEM degrees. This year they expect 3.5 million people to graduate with STEM degrees. So, over the course of a bit over a decade, it has gone from half a million to 3½ million people with STEM degrees. In Australia in 2003 we graduated 9,000 people with ICT degrees; in 2013 that dropped to just over 3,000—from 9,000 to 3,000. So you can see why this is a serious issue, and hopefully those opposite can now understand why what Bill Shorten announced in his budget reply is so important. Not only did Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey say that it is important that all primary school students get taught to code when they are at primary school, but this is also—

Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The speaker is constantly not using proper titles. Could I ask you to refer the speaker to—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Eden-Monaro. The member for Blaxland will be reminded to use people's titles when speaking in this place.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will. I would just make the point: the Business Council of Australia thinks we need to do this. We think it is that important. We asked the Prime Minister in question time to do this, and we got this silly answer back from him that said:

He says that he wants primary school kids to be taught coding so that they can get the jobs of the future. Does he want to send them all out to work at the age of 11?

It just shows: he does not get it. The Business Council of Australia thinks we should do this. And you have got Tony Abbott with a stupid answer like this. Well, my message to Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister of Australia, and all of the government, is this: remember what happened to Ned Ludd; remember what happened to the Luddites—they lost! They ended up getting caught. I think 17 of them got hung, and seven of them got transported out to Australia. And when you get stupid answers from a Prime Minister like this, it makes me think: some of them must have got away; some of them ended up here! And some of them—or, at least, one of them, made it into the office of the Prime Minister of Australia!

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was an interesting contribution from the member for Blaxland. Actually, those Luddites ended up forming the trade union movement that allowed you to speak here today. There are parts of your address that I would agree with. More importantly, the opposition leader talks about infrastructure, and infrastructure is important to those people that actually care about where our kids are going to be in the future. I think the member for Hunter might be the only member on the opposition side at the moment who has a very regional area so that he can talk about the infrastructure and roads that are so important.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bendigo, Ballarat—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And you are not even regional either. Is that correct?

Mr Clare interjecting—

I think you have some regional roads? No regional roads?

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker—

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order. Member for McMillan, resume your seat. Member for Hunter, do you have a point of order?

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do, yes, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is it?

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do represent a rural seat, yes, and we have a number of regional members—

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not really a point of order. Resume your seat please. I call the member for McMillan.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regional seats; their regional members! The member for Hunter takes his opportunity to get up—

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not a point of order, as the member for Hunter knows.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

His seat is very similar to mine in that roads are extremely important to the infrastructure of our communities so that our businesses can operate. Why do we want our small businesses to be successful? Why do we want our farmers to be successful? That is in the member for Hunter's portfolio. It is because it creates jobs and opportunities and the sorts of educational opportunities that the member for Blaxland was just talking about.

Actually, so many of us in this House come from the same place. We may come from different sides of the parliament. We may be elected in different ways—either through favour of the union movement or by being supported by our own community or being a rather independent member—perhaps the member for Moore from Western Australia, whose electorate is quite different to that of mine of McMillan. But I tell you what we all want: we want a future for our children, we want comfortable and happy and reasonable families, we want to be able to provide the best education we possibly can, and we want to try, through the states, to give our communities the best teachers that we can possibly afford. The point that the member for Blaxland made about science, and all those things that surround science, means that this nation will be a greater nation.

Today I stood outside on my balcony and past me ran about 12 little kids, who, I would say, were from the childcare centre here in Parliament House. As I saw them run by, I thought, 'What we're actually on about here in this place is: we—even those members who are new members and younger members—in the decisions that we take today, are going to affect those children and their lifetime opportunities.' We have got to think ahead. We have got to stay together on some things. That is why I have pleaded, often, for the Labor Party to consider passing some of the bills that are put before the Senate. You have the opportunity, as a party, to support those things.

I do not know how much time I have—not much. But if I go back, to Paul Keating—it just gets you going sometimes!

Dr Leigh interjecting—

No, it does; it does. I tell you! I think it was in Adelaide. He was walking out—I think it was during the election campaign—and there was a row of people condemning him as he walked out of the room—

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was tongue in cheek.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it wasn't tongue in cheek.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it was.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was not tongue in cheek. He looked at that kid and he said, 'Get a job.' 'Get a job'! And the reason he said that was not because he was just having a bit of fun on the campaign trail. The reason he said it was: it is actually terribly important.

I heard the member for Forrest the other day say how they started their small business—how they borrowed $80,000 and they had $15,000 of equity—

Dr Leigh interjecting—

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Fraser is not in his seat.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in their farm, and they grew their farm and their dairy herd from that. They grew it from that. I went into Mr Stern and I said, 'Mr Stern, I want to start a fabrics business,' and he said, 'Take all the stock you want.' Within four months, I had paid him back and bought a whole lot more. He knew I would do well. I mean, that is what we do. That is what we have always done.

We are here in this place to create opportunities for people who would not otherwise have opportunities. And we are always trying to look to those who need a hand up, not a handout. We have the greatest country in the world. So here, on this Thursday afternoon, when we are having a bit of biff about a few things and each person has made their contribution, I am appealing to you, as I speak to the nation, and as I speak to my own electorate: we will do the very best we can, each one of us, for our electorates; we will get the infrastructure; but we must get this nation on an even keel. And to do that we are going to have to work together in many ways to create those opportunities for our young people.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all love a great underdog story. Recently Google recognised six companies for app design at its annual developers' conference in San Francisco. When the winners were read out there was one small firm that edged out some really big names. They beat Evernote, they beat Lyft and they beat BuzzFeed. This small group was honoured as best in class in the Android design section of Google Play. And who was it? It was a four-person team called Shifty Jelly. I would have given them the award just for their name! They came from Adelaide. They made it from Adelaide to the other side of the Pacific, edging out some really big names. They were on a 100-developer short list that was pared back to 18 and then to six. They received the award for seamless browsing in their Pocket Casts app. The app has been downloaded 100,000 times in the Google Play app store. After winning the award, the team's server architect, Philip Simpson, said:

For just a tiny little company in Adelaide, we feel like ‘What are we doing here?

This is not an unknown story insofar as a lot of our start-ups are being recognised in the US because a lot of people over there recognise that our start-ups think global from the start and have a lot of skill to back it up.

But they should not always be the underdog. It should not always be the small firm from one part of the world that just suddenly makes it through a 100-person or a 100-group short list. We have a lot of people. We need more. The focus for us is: how do we get more and more of those companies? We certainly know about the power of start-ups in boosting job productivity and economic growth. We know, based on what we have seen in the States, that for every job created in the tech sector, five others get created. They have job growth that is 25 times faster than other sectors. We know this will create an important source of jobs. It is doing so in the States, and it should do so here when we are under challenge.

So, what are we doing? What are we seeing right now in terms of thinking about smart jobs? And what would we have the government do? I will give you just one simple example. We have seen a decision to de-fund National ICT Australia, or NICTA, from June 2016. CSIRO officials yesterday confirmed at estimates that talks are well progressed on a potential merger between the two organisations. And in a worst-case scenario two-thirds of NICTA's 310 jobs would be gone.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's a disgrace.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a disgrace, Member for Kingsford Smith. This is a government that sought to cut more than $3 billion from science research and innovation. This is the bedrock forming the platform for future jobs, and it is being cut right now. This makes no sense whatsoever. For example, earlier the parliamentary secretary indicated that it is hard to work out what the jobs of the future would be. Well, no, it is not. What you do is get bodies like the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, which has in times past, as Skills Australia, done workforce planning for the mining sector, workforce planning for green jobs.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened to them?

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cunningham asks what happened to them. They got cut. They have been reduced. So, we are trying to plan for the jobs of the future now, but the very body that would work with industry to do that is gone. This makes no sense whatsoever. What start-ups want government to do is not to throw heaps of cash around but just to focus on the things government can do well—building skills, not cutting money from secondary and primary schooling, as we are seeing now, and not bringing in $100,000 university degrees and pricing people out of education, and not, for example, removing coding from the national curriculum and then having a Prime Minster not only defend that position but seeming to suggest that if you included it you were encouraging child labour in this country. This is backward thinking that will set us back.

We heard the previous speaker indicate that we should be working together. He is absolutely right. We should be working together. We should be working together to find ways to smarten people up and give them the skills they need, to make sure the money is there to support their investments. They should not chide us on a smart investment fund, as we had one parliamentary secretary do today, but find more ways to find the money to support ideas for talented people who need the education to support them. That is something that should be a national mission embraced by both sides of this parliament. It should not be something that is derided from one end to the other. (Time expired)

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The new economy is a result of the transition from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy. The government has invested more than $9 billion this year alone in science, research and innovation, including almost $70 million in additional funding for Australia's leading scientific research organisations to build world-class infrastructure that will create stronger connections between research and industry. Cutting-edge technologies such as nanotechnology, telematics, 3D printing and bionics are being developed at leading research institutes across Australia.

This federal budget includes an investment of more than $3 billion in the CSIRO over four years in the forward estimates. As Australian manufacturing and industry transitions into a new phase, the Abbott government is putting science at the centre of industry to identify and harness new jobs and opportunities in the rapidly changing global economy. The government continues to support national world-class research infrastructure to attract the world's best researchers and facilitate collaboration with industry. It has committed two years of operating funding to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. The government will provide $300 million through the 2015-16 budget to secure the jobs of 1,700 highly skilled technical and research staff for the next two years. Over 35,000 researchers across 222 institutions across Australia use NCRIS facilities.

Trade and investment with emerging economies in our region is the key to promoting economic development. Over the past year, there has been a 23 per cent increase in approved foreign investment applications in Australia. In order to maximise economic benefit, investment in research and development must necessarily be closely matched with the commercialisation of Australian innovation, invention and technology. Lifting the value of our service exports such as higher education, tourism, health care and financial services to just half the level of our commodity exports would add $50 billion to our gross domestic product each year. The government's Medical Research Future Fund is expected to reach $20 billion in 2019-20, with more than $400 million expected to be provided to researchers over the forward estimates. This will improve health outcomes for all Australians.

Let me highlight some of the research and development innovations that are already occurring at Edith Cowan University in my electorate of Moore. This major university is a leader in the field of research, innovation and enterprise initiatives and it accommodates three leading research institutes based at its Joondalup campus. ECU's Security Research Institute is one of the leading cybersecurity and digital forensic groups in the world, and it is recognised for its expertise in human, physical and aviation security. The institute consistently delivers quality outcomes in computer and digital forensics, network and wireless security, information warfare, physical security and risk management. Similarly, the university's Electron Science Research Institute, established in 2003, has grown into a world leader—

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.