Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday, in question time, I sat here in shock at the appalling comments made by our Prime Minister: 'If you're good at your job, you'll get a job.' How rude! How insulting to say that to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who have lost their job through no fault of their own but because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I think about the thousands of aviation workers. You could be the best pilot in Australia or you could be the best maintenance engineer, yet your industry is shut down. You are not able to get a job at what you're good at. I think of the thousands of people working in our universities who have lost their jobs because this Prime Minister wasn't good at his job and didn't extend JobKeeper to that sector. If we had a Prime Minister who was good at his job, he would have introduced JobKeeper before industries started to close down, before people started to lose their jobs—but he didn't. Such cheap rhetoric from this Prime Minister. At a time when people and workers in this country need a leader we have someone who uses question time to belittle, to be mean and to criticise those who are looking for work. Prime Minister: grow up, be good at your job and be the leader this nation needs.