Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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

The Government's lack of a jobs plan which is leaving too many Australians behind.

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—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today was the darkest day in the Australian economy for almost a century, as we had confirmed what so many Australians already knew, which is that Australia is in the deepest, most damaging, most devastating recession on record. Recessions rob communities of jobs, they rob families of breadwinners, they rob nations of opportunities and they risk discarding entire generations of people who are disconnected from work for long enough that they find it hard to ever find their way back again. These are the human consequences and the human costs of the type of recession that Australia finds itself in today.

Australia's had a really remarkable run of continuous economic growth. No other developed nation like ours can claim to have grown continuously for almost three decades, as Australia has done. That is a tribute, most of all, to the Australian people—Australian workers, Australian businesses, Australian communities—who have achieved something truly amazing, something that the rest of the world has envied us for for some time: a remarkable three-decade run of continuous economic growth. It began under Paul Keating, of course, under the Labor government of the early nineties; it was protected when it was last most at risk by another Labor government—Kevin Rudd, working with Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan; and that's something that this side of the House is really proud of. The fact is that that remarkable run comes to an end today, officially, on the watch of those opposite.

This is the worst recession in almost a century. We do already have a new record: more than a million Australians are jobless for the first time in the history of this nation. The government tell us that they expect something like an extra 400,000 Australians to join the unemployment queues between now and Christmas. The Treasurer has spent much of today telling Australians what they already knew, that things are bad, things are grim—people already knew that; they already felt that—but, remarkably, still not a word about what the government actually intends to do about it; still nothing that resembles a credible, genuine, comprehensive plan for jobs in this country. And that is what the nation most needs right now, as we face these dark days of recession and the long tail of unemployment. We fear the intergenerational disadvantage that comes from long-term unemployment—the lost generation, the disadvantage that concentrates and cascades. Unfortunately, it's something that has happened in many of the communities that we on this side of the House represent. That's the thing that we are trying to avoid here. That is the reason why we are so passionate about getting the economic decisions right—because the human costs of getting it wrong are diabolical. And it's not just for the next few months, as important as that is, and not even for the next few years, as important as that is. But, if the government continues to get things wrong, this nation will wear the costs and consequences of that for generations, and that's what we're trying to avoid.

This recession is deeper than it needs to be, and it will hang around longer than it needs to hang around if the government continues to get at least three things wrong. The first is that they were too slow out of the blocks to provide what is welcome support in the economy. Unfortunately, they show all of the signs of withdrawing that support too soon. So, having come in too late and too narrowly, they risk withdrawing that support too soon and too broadly. As the Reserve Bank governor and others have pointed out, that does have the potential to cruel the recovery before it even gathers pace, and that is something we need to avoid. That's the first mistake.

The second—and, unfortunately, it's become a feature of the government, of those opposite—is the mistake of thinking that announcing support for the economy is a substitute for delivering that support to real people in real communities, and real workers and businesses right around Australia. The announcement of that support is not the thing that keeps the economy going; it's the delivery of that support. We heard yesterday, and again today, the government saying they're delivering $314 billion of support, when in reality they can only get to $85 billion. What that means is that, having not got enough support out the door, the recession is deeper than it needs to be and it will hang around longer than it needs to hang around.

The third mistake that those opposite have made may be the most consequential one, and that is that, in their rush to withdraw support from the economy, they don't have a plan for jobs to replace it. If they said to us, 'We want to replace this support with something else,' we would listen. But the reality is they're in this rush and they're all clambering over each other to withdraw support out of the economy, but there's nothing to replace it. That is also going to have devastating consequences for the economy.

Australians are really worried right now, for good reason. There's a lot of anxiety. We all know it. We all hear it and feel it when we engage with our own communities. And people are anxious for the right reasons. They're worried about how they'll put food on the table, put school shoes on their kids, pay the rent or pay off the mortgage. These are very real concerns that those opposite need to understand. When the Australian people are as concerned as they are, they look to the government for support, of course. But they also look to the government for a vision of what happens next, how we get out of this together and what we need to do to stand up for each other, speak up for each other and work together to get ourselves out of this mess that we are seeing in the economy right now. That plan for the future and that plan for jobs is entirely absent. We heard that again in question time today.

The Treasurer has had a lot to say today, of course—it's an important day for the Treasurer to seek to explain what's going on to the Australian people. But they have not explained to the Australian people what they're going to do about it. I think that at the end of today, when Australians tuck their kids in and fall asleep, all they will really have learned is that there are some abstract numbers from the Bureau of Statistics which confirm what they already knew, but they're none the wiser about what the government wants to do about them.

I think it's becoming really clear that the Treasurer is not up to this task. I don't say that lightly, because we do want the government to succeed. If the government succeed with their policy agenda then more Australians will keep their jobs or find work, having lost their jobs to this recession. But I think it is clear that the Treasurer is not up to it. If you could create jobs in this economy by spinning and grinning your way through it, if you could create jobs by networking or if you could create jobs by being really good at poring over other people's transcripts with your little yellow highlighter out then this would be the guy—we've got our guy! But, unfortunately, we need a Treasurer with a bit of vision, a bit of humility, a bit of depth, a bit of grunt and a bit of understanding of what's happening to real people in real communities. It pains me to say that we don't have that.

He is in many ways a poster child for the problem with this government: the preference for spin over substance, chasing headlines and not chasing jobs—as the Leader of the Opposition says, 'always there for the photo op but never there for the follow-up'. This is a real problem with this government. This is not just a political criticism that we're making; it actually has consequences for people. When you have a government that prioritises the headline over the job and the announcement over the delivery then more and more people are going to suffer during this recession. It's no wonder that when we opened the paper during the course of last week we saw what even the Treasurer's own colleagues were saying of him, in Rob Harris's piece in The Sydney Morning Herald:

"We were announcing stimulus packages in the morning which were irrelevant by the afternoon, but you'd pick up the paper and read about how Josh did this or that and how the policy was formed," one colleague said on the condition of anonymity. "I thought to myself 'how on earth does he have the time to promote himself when we are dealing with the biggest challenge we've faced in a century?'"

I think there's something to that criticism. Whoever that was over there, I think you're right. I think that's a legitimate criticism.

One of the ways we know he spends more time promoting himself than trying to identify with the real needs and anxieties of the Australian community is that, when we got the worst number in almost a century today, his response was, 'Well, the good news is we're not doing as badly as Donald Trump's America'. If you're one of the one million unemployed in this country, or you are one of the 400,000 who are about to lose their jobs, the idea that things are a little bit worse in Donald Trump's America is absolutely meaningless to you. It is cold comfort for all those people who have lost their jobs and all of those businesses who have hit the fence in the last little while. We desperately need those opposite to reconsider their withdrawal of support from the economy. We need them to get the support that they announced out the door and, most importantly and most fundamentally, we need to hear a plan for jobs in this country.

Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Rankin's assertion about there being no jobs plan is simply factually untrue. He knows it's untrue because over the past two weeks he has been debating in this place aspects of our jobs plan and, by all appearances, trying his best to frustrate and delay our plan. I think that most Australians do know about our plan. Those opposite might not wish to recall it, but there was a poll over the weekend showing that, on the question of having a plan and a vision for the future of Australia, the Prime Minister and our government held the widest margin over an opposition at any time in the last 10 years. I'll quote from the article; it said, 'Voters overwhelmingly back Mr Morrison, the Prime Minister, in a time of crisis as having a plan for the future.'

Inconveniently for those opposite, the article went on to add that the results reveal a political problem for Labor and for the Labor leader. While those opposite might wish to focus on their political priorities, Australians know that the government's focus throughout the course of this once-in-100-years crisis has been to save lives and to save livelihoods. The government has this week extended JobKeeper and our other support measures. Australians know that, as we and the rest of the world emerge on the other side of this crisis, it is only the Morrison government which has demonstrated a commitment to move quickly, with policies like JobKeeper, and to consider every lever at our disposal to save jobs, to create new jobs and to maintain our prosperity.

We know that these are extraordinary times and that there are no simple answers and no silver bullets when it comes to addressing the dual health and economic crises of COVID-19. And that's exactly why we have a multipronged jobs plan that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to getting Australians back into work. From our unprecedented economic support packages, to reforms to skills and apprenticeships, to deregulation and cutting red tape, to our industrial relations forms, to the record investments we're making in nation-building infrastructure, to the much-needed reforms we're making to Australia's taxation system—the Morrison governments plan is providing an unprecedented level of policy support for Australia and Australians during COVID-19. And that includes the more than $100 billion that we have committed to the unprecedented JobKeeper program, which to date has seen more than $42 billion delivered in temporary and targeted JobKeeper payments to more than 900,000 businesses, providing income support and a vital economic lifeline to around 3½ million Australian people.

And we continue to provide this unprecedented support to households and businesses by extending the JobKeeper program by six months in the laws that we passed through the parliament just this week. The businesses kept open and the workers whose jobs are saved aren't just statistics as was mentioned on the other side just then; they are our friends, our family and the many tens of thousands of people in the community and on the street who we represent in this chamber. I know I'm not alone when I say that I have met and spoken to thousands of constituents over the course of this crisis who have looked to the federal government for help this year and have been able to rely on the economic and other policy lifelines provided by our government in this moment of significant need. Many of these local constituents, these local businesses, tell us what we know: that the Morrison government's policies, including JobKeeper, are delivering results. More than half of the 1.3 million Australians who have either lost their job or seen their hours reduced to zero during this crisis are now back in work. That support has helped to save 700,000 Australian jobs. The unemployment rate would have been about five per cent higher than it is in Australia today were it not for our support.

We don't seek to downplay or trivialise the unprecedented economic hardship being felt by so many Australians, which was revealed in those figures today. At the same time, it is a reasonable approach to assess how the government's jobs plan is faring in respect to this pandemic. And when you do that it is of course important to compare our experience to that of other comparable nations. The economies of almost all countries will contract this year, according to the IMF, with many of those countries, including countries very much like ours, experiencing huge declines. The figures show staggering declines in GDP around the world—20 per cent in the UK, 14 per cent in France and 10 per cent in Canada. Here in Australia, today's national accounts reveal the pain that Australians are feeling. They show a figure of seven per cent, which is much less than what we are seeing in most of the countries we reasonably compare our situation to. We know that we are not magically immune from the wrecking ball of COVID. We know that Australians are doing it tough at this challenging time. And the government will continue to do everything we can to support Australian households, businesses and our economy.

The government's plan even extends to non-economic portfolios like my own. In the area of waste reduction and recycling, the government's proposed reforms will contribute to 10,000 more jobs being created in the resource recovery sector. Our recycling bills, the first of their kind, combined with our government's Recycling Modernisation Fund and our other reforms around recycling, are of course all designed to accomplish better environmental outcomes in Australia and across our region, including through the reduction of plastics in our oceans. But these recycling bills and other reforms will also achieve economic benefits, economic growth and more resilience in Australia's economy. Creating value through transforming waste-streams back into valuable resources is a better, smarter way of dealing with our waste. And, ultimately, it means prosperity and jobs. The jobs in the resource recovery sector are many and varied: equipment operators, maintenance workers, chemists, scientists, logistics managers. In short, we're building here in Australia the recycling facilities and infrastructure we need to process the waste streams that, until now, we've been sending offshore.

Every Australian needs to see some of the latest technology that's available for sorting and processing waste. It's an eye-opening experience when you see the conveyor belts taking co-mingled recyclables whizzing along at a million miles an hour, and the machines using spectrometry—lasers, essentially—to instantly check whether that piece of plastic is, say, clear PET or white polypropylene, and then the jets of air and magnets and so on pushing them onto different conveyor belts, so that ultimately you get these tubs of perfectly sorted resources. Seeing that is when you realise that this is something we should and can do more of in Australia.

Our recycling modernisation fund, together with contributions from the states and territories and industry, now forms the basis of a $1 billion transformation our government is overseeing of Australia's domestic waste and recycling industries. That is going to create so many new jobs. Those jobs—10,000 new jobs—are what our government's plan, just in this space, is supporting. Many of these new jobs, I hasten to add, will be in exactly the parts of the country where we need to see them the most—in regional Australia and in outer suburbs. Keep in mind: these investments and the new facilities being built will simultaneously help our nation to become more self-reliant and self-sufficient in key industries, including manufacturing and remanufacturing, which is exactly what Australians want to see happening right now.

Whether it's through our ambitious plan for waste and recycling or through the hard work of ministerial colleagues across almost every area of policy and economic reform, our government has a strong, multipronged plan for jobs. In coming years, as we emerge on the other side of this crisis, Australia is going to need a federal government which can be trusted with the economy and which has the proven capacity to help industry to create significant numbers of jobs. If those are the criteria, there is only one government in all of Australia's history that has created, to date, over a million and a half new jobs. That's the track record of this government, and the Morrison government will remain focused on building confidence and momentum in our economy, saving lives and saving livelihoods. We'll remain focused on the road out and on getting Australians back to work.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a dark day: a recession, the first in 30 years; a seven per cent contraction in the economy over the last quarter. But behind that word 'recession' lies the fate of millions of Australians. One million Australians are out of work. Another three million Australians are on JobKeeper, reliant on government support for their livelihoods in the full knowledge that, in three weeks time, the government is going to slash $300 of support from each and every one of those people. Unemployment's going up. Business investment's going down. Hope's nowhere to be seen. The government's slashing $300 a head from all of those people who are relying on their support.

I speak with some experience on what it's like to attempt to enter the workforce in the midst of a recession. I left school in 1983, in the midst of a recession, but, in particular, a regional recession in the Illawarra, created by the collapse of the steel industry. In the months before I left school, the steelworks contracted from a workplace employing 23,000 people to a workplace employing 13,000 people—10,000 people in a period of very few months lost their jobs, 10,000 fathers and mothers in households throughout one region alone. Jobs walked out the door. But it wasn't just the experience of those people who lost their jobs; it was all my classmates, who had the legitimate hope and expectation that, if they applied themselves at school, in the next few months, they would follow their fathers or their brothers or their uncles into a job as a boilermaker or a fitter in the steelworks or a sparky in the mines or an operator in one of the manufacturing industries that worked in unison with the steelworks. Those legitimate hopes and expectations were smashed in months.

In situations like this, the government has a role. The region on its own could not bring itself out of that recession. We needed assistance and a plan from the government, and we got it. The election of the Hawke Labor government saw a turning of the fortunes for the people of the Illawarra. The steel industry plan was put in place. The government went to BHP, as it then was, not with false hope but with a real plan: 'Yes, people are going to lose their jobs, and this business will not exist in another 10 years unless the owners of that business make some investments and transform it into a productive enterprise. But, at the same time, you have an obligation to the workers that you're about to lose and the workers that you're going to keep. You need to train those workers to ensure that they have the skills for your workplace in the future. You need to upgrade your plant and equipment so that it's not the clapped-out, sweated capital that doesn't have a hope of competing in a manufacturing industry of the future.'

This is the sort of plan that we need today: government working in partnership with business, saying, 'We are going to invest with you and help you to become more productive enterprises and help you to help your employees, so long as there is an agreement that there will be a sharing of the productive benefits when growth does come.' It doesn't all get squirrelled away into profits; it's shared between the workers and the business, and there is a transition plan for those workers who are losing their jobs. Unless you do all three of those things, it will not work. That's what we need, not just in one region but all around the country.

What we don't need is a recovery built on a press release. It won't work. What we don't need over the next few months is a proliferation of grants programs that dole out money to National Party or Liberal Party electorates on the basis of mateships. We don't need that. This is a recession affecting the whole country, not just National Party or Liberal Party electorates. What we need is a plan that truly brings together the life of the slogan the Prime Minister is happy to repeat: 'We're all in this together'. We're happy to work with the government on this plan, but we'll be criticising it every step of the way when they fall short. (Time expired)

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Commonwealth government has a comprehensive jobs plan that is working to protect and create jobs during this once-in-a-lifetime health and economic crisis. At a time like this, a multipronged approach is needed. The Commonwealth government's plan has several aspects, including funding for more apprenticeships and traineeships, a focus on deregulation and cutting red tape, necessary industrial relations reform to create more flexible workplaces, tax reform to give money back to hardworking Australians, investments into infrastructure, and, of course, the economic support packages that have been protecting Australian jobs for many months now. All of these elements will be crucial to ensure that enough jobs can be created to support Australia's recovery out of the worst recession we have faced in almost 100 years.

Today I want to focus on one point in particular—the JobKeeper payment, which I know has protected and will continue to protect jobs in my electorate of Mallee and across the country. Now worth over $100 billion, the JobKeeper program has acted as a lifeline for over 3.5 million people and nearly one million Australian businesses. In the month of May, there were 4,200 businesses in Mallee who applied for JobKeeper. In recent weeks, I've heard from a range of businesses across Mallee who have benefited enormously from the JobKeeper payment. I repeatedly hear that JobKeeper has kept businesses alive, has kept employees in jobs and has facilitated regeneration in an incredibly challenging environment.

Many of the small hotels and motels in Mallee have been hit hard due to a lack of visitors and professional clients. The Junction Motel in Maryborough, operated by Janet McDonald, is almost fully reliant on guests coming out of Australia's capital cities. Janet said that, if it weren't for JobKeeper, she would be fearful for her business surviving. Janet was desperate for an extension of the JobKeeper payment when I spoke to her in July, and I was glad to later inform her of the extension to the program. Janet knows that the tourism industry will be one of the last to recover from this pandemic, due to the ongoing need for restrictions, and she's incredibly grateful for the ongoing support of the Commonwealth government.

I've also heard from Brian Wood, the Director of Wood & Co Real Estate in Swan Hill. His business has been affected by reduced rental income as they negotiate rental relief for commercial and domestic tenants due to the pandemic. Seven of Brian's staff have been retained through the JobKeeper payment. Another business in Swan Hill is Tan's Tucker Box, owned and operated by Tania Hovenden. Tania told me that her business would be closed without JobKeeper. She said the payment was a lifesaver at the start of the pandemic when everything was so uncertain. Trade at her business is still variable due to ongoing restrictions, and she still needs JobKeeper to survive. Tania has been able to retain two staff with the payment and is now confident she will be able to trade out of this crisis into a healthy position.

I also want to welcome the significant infrastructure investments that are being made around the country. My electorate of Mallee has received funding for five projects, totalling $4.2 million. These projects include the Charlton 2020; Burchip Streetscape; Buloke Roads of Strategic Importance; projects in Buloke Shire Council; stage 1 of Our Game Plan in Swan Hill, with its rural city council; Ouyen Livestock Exchange in Mildura Rural City Council; and Woodbine accommodation facilities in Yarriambiack Shire Council. The 12 local government areas in my electorate have also received $18 million in new funding through the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. I know that councils in Mallee are putting this money towards priority projects that will create jobs in the short and long term. Northern Grampians Shire Council, for example, is using the money for numerous infrastructure projects in Saint Arnaud, in the south of my electorate.

The Commonwealth government does have a plan to ensure that Australian jobs are protected and that more are created. This is clearly evident through the success of the JobKeeper payment and the significant infrastructure commitments we've already made and will continue to make through the JobMaker plan. The government has a multipronged approach to solve the challenges facing Australia in terms of job creation, and this plan is leading us out and on the road to recovery.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The numbers that we've received today have told us something that Australians knew. They knew because they could see it and they could feel it. They could see it in the shuttered shops. They could see it in the Centrelink queues snaking around the block. They could see it in the eyes of the person struggling to keep their business open at the local cafe they were used to visiting. And they could feel it in their own anxiety, in their worry about losing their job or losing hours at work, or feeling bad because, like us, they've got secure work and they feel terrible for the people they see—their friends and relatives, the people they went to school with—that don't have that same security. We didn't choose this pandemic. What we can do, though, is choose how we respond to it.

I think it's quite right—I think there is agreement across both sides of the chamber—that we need to do everything we can as a parliament to keep people healthy, to keep them safe and to keep them working. But what there's not agreement about is what measures to take. What do we do? What do we do to keep people working? What do we do to get the economy back on track? Over here we have a plan to get people back to work, to keep them in jobs and to make sure their wages and conditions are supporting their confidence to go out and keep spending and investing to create jobs for other people. On that side we've got two things happening: we've got announcements—sadly, too many of those have turned out to be empty rhetoric—and, even worse, we've actually got measures that make things worse now, not better.

We all know about the announcements. We've got JobKeeper, JobSeeker, HomeBuilder and JobMaker. JobKeeper we're now actually reducing. JobSeeker we're now reducing. JobMaker nobody really understands. As for HomeBuilder, yesterday the minister claimed it was supporting hundreds of thousands of tradies. Well, we know that not a dollar has actually gone out the door for HomeBuilder, so that's a pretty good effort, isn't it—supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs without a dollar spent! As for the small business loans, the Treasurer confessed yesterday that less than five per cent of those loans have actually made it to small businesses. So they are very big on announcement but really terrible at getting that support into the hands of the people who are desperate for it, who desperately need it and are relying on it to make ends meet, to pay the bills and to keep their businesses open. That's a serious problem.

But you know what's even worse? What is even worse is that there are things this government is choosing to do that are making things worse, not better—deliberate decisions that are taking money out of the hands of people who desperately need it to make ends meet. Cutting JobKeeper is one example. Another is cutting wages for people who are still employed. Wages were flatlining before COVID-19 hit the Australian economy. They've been falling since COVID-19 hit. What do the government want to do? They want to make it worse by changing the industrial relations environment so that people lose more out of their pay packets. We've seen Qantas. They're about to sack 2,500 people, not because the jobs aren't there but because they want to rehire a cheaper workforce. Do we hear the government objecting to that? Do we hear the government objecting to the fact that the Australia Post executives want to pay themselves a bonus while they ask their staff to deliver parcels as volunteers? The government are making it worse by preventing the indexation of the pension. They say they're going to fix that. They're waiting for a good time for a big announcement, are they? Have they not cut the ad yet? Is that the problem? Is that the delay—they haven't got the advertisement ready?

I want to finish on this one: universities. Why on God's earth would you make it harder and more expensive for people to get an education at a time when unemployment has gone through the roof? More than a million people are unemployed and another 400,000 are set to lose their jobs by Christmas, and this government chooses this time to make it harder and more expensive to get the education that would help you in this competitive jobs market. Why? (Time expired)

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier today the Treasurer outlined the record fall of real GDP by seven per cent for the June quarter and the record fall in household consumption. As the Treasurer pointed out, today's figures only confirm the recession. Australians know, because they are living it. The people of Moncrieff are living it.

But there's a sense of hope and a sense of momentum, and that's coming from this side of the House. When I visit local Gold Coast businesses, I so often hear that it would have been so much worse without the decisive action of the Morrison government. Small business owners tell me the doors are open thanks to the government support, giving them a bridge to their future. Workers tell me they still have a job thanks to JobKeeper, like Carol in Surfers Paradise, who has been working at the same restaurant for 25 years. She and all the staff at the restaurant are on JobKeeper. That decisive action has been on a tremendous scale. There has been over $300 billion in economic support packages by our government, and that has been so important for the Gold Coast: JobKeeper, cash flow boosts, the coronavirus supplement, stimulus payments, backing business investment, supporting apprentices and trainees, instant asset write-offs and more. That decisive action has prevented 700,000 people from losing their jobs. Unemployment would have been five per cent higher without the Morrison government's support packages.

While the government has been spreading hope and delivering support, Gold Coasters get a very different message from those opposite. It's a message of fear. The member for Rankin says we don't have a plan. He sends his Brisbane mate Senator Watt down to the coast to spread fear and misinformation, ignorant of the reality, because Labor ignored the Reimagine Gold Coast forum with business and with industry leaders, supported by many members on this side of the House. But Gold Coasters aren't listening to the Labor message of fear. The work ethic of people like Carol in Surfers Paradise can't be crushed by Labor's message of fear. Business and industry are leading the way and on this side of the House we are supporting them. I back business and I back industry.

The $62.8 million Local Jobs Program was announced yesterday by the minister. The program will deliver a local employment facilitator who will work with local stakeholders. Those stakeholders are the City Heart Taskforce that I convened in May, an across-industry task force who have already done the work at the Reimagine Gold Coast forum—which was a COVID-safe event held two weeks ago—that will provide the necessary insights to work alongside the Local Jobs Program. The Local Jobs Program will assist Gold Coasters with reskilling, upskilling and setting up employment pathways for local jobseekers. Through the forum, the City Heart Taskforce has ensured that the Gold Coast is ready, willing and able to work alongside the Morrison government to match skills with jobs through the Local Jobs Program and the local jobs plan. The National Skills Commission is part of the government's $585 million package delivering skills for today and tomorrow, and its data will be used to assist jobseekers.

The government's approach to skills and employment contrasts with the mess that Labor left behind when last in office. Nobody has forgotten the debacle of bogus courses by unscrupulous training providers permitted by Labor's changes to the VET FEE-HELP program. I know Gold Coasters are relieved that during this pandemic the steady hands of our Prime Minister and our Treasurer are on the wheel, because instead of pink batts—remember those in the GFC?—they get JobKeeper and they get JobSeeker. The contrast could not be greater.

On the Gold Coast business leaders are determined to create jobs for today and tomorrow. The skills focus of this government is the best to complement it. The member for Rankin has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to jobs, because he doesn't want to talk about the harm of the state border closure by his friend Annastacia Palaszczuk. When it comes to border closures he said today: 'I think she's been right.' The member for Rankin is a supporter of an alternative plan for jobs. It is the Queensland Premier's plan. It's the plan for her job and it's probably a plan for 'dodgy Jackie's' job. It's not a plan for Gold Coast jobs and it comes at the expense of Gold Coast businesses. The harsh border closures are hurting Gold Coast businesses, so that she can keep her job by looking tough rather than helping people doing it tough. By contrast, the Local Jobs Program is about putting Gold Coast jobseekers at the very heart of our city's economic recovery.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In March my constituent Chris Endrey found himself jobless. As he put it:

The financial distress of this period has pressed onto other areas of my life, with deleterious impacts upon my health, a loss of housing security, and the loss of the higher order capacities which evaporate in the face of such baseline pressures.

…   …   …

I am so desperate to end my hours of infinite couch-surfing and writing stupid letters and instead channel my energy and talents into something of use to our rumbling society.

Chris Endrey is among the one million Australians out of work, and another 400,000 will lose their jobs before Christmas. Unemployment can have devastating impacts on physical health, on mental health, on relationships, on marriages and on children. A job isn't just a source of income. It's also a source of self-esteem and identity. That's why we so often ask someone at a party, 'So, what do you do?' The impact of joblessness is worst for young people. There's Treasury research showing that the scarring impacts can last up to a decade and have gotten worse over recent decades. That's why the government's short-sighted cuts to university are so damaging to young people.

Today, we've learned that there was a seven per cent drop in national income last quarter. Australia, as of today, is in its first recession in a generation and the worst downturn in nearly a century. The Australian economy approached this downturn from a position of weakness. We started this year with the worst wage growth on record. Household spending was growing at the slowest pace since the global financial crisis. Retail was in its deepest slump since 1990. Last year, new car sales fell eight per cent. Construction was shrinking at its fastest rate since 1999. Business investment was at its lowest level since the 1990s recession. Labour productivity, output per hour worked, fell 0.2 per cent in 2018-19. The rate of new business formation was declining. The rate of job switching was down. Geographic mobility had fallen. We were in the Morrison stagnation at the start of the year, and we're in the Morrison recession now. Despite this, the government has left out casuals, arts workers and the university sector from its response. The government now plans to cut JobKeeper and JobSeeker at the end of the month. The economy has not snapped back as the Prime Minister promised, but he's snapping back support all the same. The HomeBuilder policy hasn't delivered one dollar of support. Australians are flying blind, with the government having promised to provide regular unemployment data to the COVID committee and having broken that promise.

What we need isn't just fiscal stimulus; we need stimulus that also leaves a positive legacy. That could include investment in renewables: making buildings more efficient and building cycle paths, car chargers, public transport systems and solar and wind farms. We could improve educational outcomes, given that, as we know, Australia's test scores in maths, science and reading have dropped since the start of the century, and COVID has widened the educational gap. We could help turn that around by engaging additional educators to provide intensive support to our most vulnerable students. We could build more social housing, as the member for Blaxland has pointed out, dealing with the fact that the home ownership rate is now at a 60-year low. And we could work to reduce inequality. Recessions tend to hurt the most those who have the least. Low-income workers are less likely to be able to telework. People with few assets are most vulnerable to dropping off the edge. We should make paid pandemic leave available to all workers. We should expand child care to help counteract the disproportionate effect of the downturn on women. Firms getting JobKeeper shouldn't be paying out massive CEO bonuses and excessive dividends. I thank the member for Herbert for his support of that position in the press today.

If we get this right, we have an opportunity to emerge from this crisis as a nation that puts connectedness ahead of selfish individualism. We need an engaged egalitarian approach. We need to recognise that the world isn't our enemy—that trade, migration and foreign investment have been fundamental to Australia's productivity growth. If we continue the attacks on 'negative globalism', if we continue the populist political attacks on overseas nations, then Australia will be poorer and our recovery will be slower. If we're going to get out of the Morrison recession, we need a clear plan, we need a smart stimulus and we need engaged egalitarianism.

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, the national accounts have shown just how much we've been affected by this once-in-100-years pandemic. This is why the Morrison government has been implementing an economic package throughout the pandemic that has assisted, I'm really pleased to say, 4,500 businesses in my community. Many of them have spoken to me about this package being a lifesaver or throwing them a lifeline so they can continue to employ local people and continue to do the important work they do across our community. As the Prime Minister says, we are fighting a war on two fronts: on the health front, to defeat the virus, and, on the economic front, to promote jobs and stability to the millions of Australians who have felt the impacts of the coronavirus. To achieve these, we need to deliver projects that create jobs and support the thousands of local businesses, including in my electorate of Lindsay and including our new emerging industries.

Yesterday, the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business announced a new $62.8 million local jobs program. This program helps Australians reskill and upskill and find employment as quickly as possible. It's really encouraging that at home in Lindsay we will now have a local employment facilitator. The facilitator will use local expertise to connect jobseekers in Western Sydney with training, job opportunities and other support. They will chair a local jobs and skills task force made up of government representatives, Indigenous representatives and community organisations. The task force will develop a local jobs plan to identify priorities, opportunities and skills gaps. They'll build pathways for local people, and pathways are so important. I've seen this, working in a social housing organisation: how to step out of intergenerational welfare and have financial independence. These pathways will help people enter industries with jobs on demand. Our local recovery funds will support and develop projects that place jobseekers at the forefront of our economic recovery.

As the Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure said today in question time, the delivery of the Western Sydney Infrastructure Plan, the building of the Western Sydney Airport and growing industries that will create jobs in the Aerotropolis is how we create jobs. In Lindsay we're looking at the jobs of the future in emerging industries around space, defence, advanced manufacturing, STEM, research, start-ups and more. These industries will play an important role in Australia's roadmap beyond coronavirus, creating jobs and supporting local families. We're creating 200,000 jobs by supercharging the Aerotropolis and the Agribusiness Precinct, building the skills in our local community through new educational opportunities to ensure that the jobs of the future in Western Sydney stay local and that people don't have to do that long commute that 300,000 people in Western Sydney do every day for their jobs.

The construction of the airport will create over 11,300 direct and indirect jobs and 28,000 full-time jobs within five years of opening and, on top of that, the Sydney Metro Western Sydney Airport line, which runs through my electorate of Lindsay, will create 14,000 jobs. I created the Lindsay Jobs of the Future Forum to bring together small business owners, employment, education, training and manufacturing across Western Sydney to collaborate on ways our kids can be trained and educated in the jobs of the future that are coming to Western Sydney, because of the infrastructure investment that the Morrison government is making.

Recently, I held a teleconference meeting of the Lindsay Jobs of the Future Forum, and we discussed the important opportunities that are coming. This was where we established the Advancing Manufacturing Taskforce. This will investigate, promote and advocate for policies that create local, national and international opportunities for local Australian manufacturers.

Australian innovation, value and quality set us apart from our foreign competitors and give us that competitive advantage. By educating and training our kids in the jobs of the future, we can sustain and generate generations of local jobs through advanced manufacturing. This is what I'm committed to doing through my community and through the Advancing Manufacturing Taskforce.

Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed it was a sobering set of national account figures that were announced today, but they presented the story that we already knew, and that was that Australians are doing it tough, right across the country, because of the COVID-19 recession. But what Australians right round the country know, as they're dealing with the COVID-19 recession, is that the Morrison government has their back. They know that the Morrison government has created jobs before, over a million of them, and that we can do it again. They know that the Morrison government stepped in very quickly once the full scale of COVID-19 became clear, to introduce JobKeeper and JobSeeker—and it was only yesterday that the government passed our extension to JobKeeper, a program keeping thousands of Australians in jobs in one of the toughest times, a program which represents the largest economic lifeline in Australian history, a program without which Treasury estimates Australia's unemployment rate would be five percentage points higher.

Labor members are all over the shop when it comes to JobKeeper and other support measures. First they want to claim that it was their idea, then they want to run it down, then they want it amended, then they want it extended, then they want it reduced, then they want to vote against it. The Australian people simply do not know where Labor members stand on this and other issues. They do know one thing: that Labor members opposite have a plan. They have a plan to try and keep their own jobs by playing politics with the COVID recession and the COVID pandemic. That's not the plan that the Australian people want. The Australian people know that, in contrast, the Morrison government will never stray from the task of keeping Australians in jobs and creating new jobs wherever possible. Prior to COVID-19, we had already created 1.5 million jobs right across this country. Under this government, female participation levels had risen and the gender pay gap had fallen to record lows. We promised that we would create jobs, and we did it. And now we will do it again.

I've been talking to a local business owner—as I'm sure other MPs have been talking to local business owners in their electorates—about how they're affected by the COVID-19 recession. This business owner put it to me very, very simply. JobKeeper was what enabled him to keep his business open and his employees in work. He described it simply as this: 'Julian, it saved our bacon.' Now, they are not saying that about the Labor members opposite. They're not saying that about the Labor state governments around the country. They weren't saying that when the Labor members opposite took $387 billion worth of new taxes to the last election. That's still their plan, by the way. Imagine if we had gone into the COVID-19 recession saddled with Shorten's $387 billion worth of taxes—taxes that Labor members opposite still have as their policy today.

The most important part of Australia's economic recovery is getting Australians back into jobs, and that is what we are focused on. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Michaelia Cash, are doing that through the JobMaker program, preparing our labour market for the future by strengthening the education and training sector. We know that the jobs that come after the COVID-19 pandemic may not be the same jobs that were lost during it, so it's vitally important that we are prepped and ready with the skills we need to rebuild and recover.

I made the point earlier that Labor MPs only have one plan, and that is to keep their own jobs by playing politics. Nowhere is it more stark than in my home state of Queensland, with its Labor state government. The politics that they are playing with the COVID recession sadden me. They would try and blame all of Queensland's woes on the COVID-19 recession. But we remember that it was under the Queensland Labor state government that before coronavirus, Queensland had the highest unemployment; before coronavirus, Queensland had the highest number of business bankruptcies; and before coronavirus, Queensland had the lowest level of business confidence of any state. They're the only state not to bring down a budget. I know Australians will take the plan of Morrison government MPs over Labor MPs any day of the week, because we are about creating jobs, not about our own. (Time expired)

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The discussion has concluded.