Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week in this parliament we saw a very strange sight indeed—shocking, even, to those who might have observed parliament or Australian politics for the last decade or more. We saw an Australian government led by a prime minister behaving like an adult, who brought together leaders from right across the country in the national interest. Now, this shouldn't be something to remark upon. It should be the ordinary business of government. But what we've seen after a decade of dysfunction and division from those opposite has left the country in a serious, precarious situation in terms of the economy, the budget and the big national challenges. So we saw business leaders, union leaders and experts actually listening to professors who spend their lives thinking about these things. Workers were sitting down in the same room, listening to each other and talking about the big national challenges.

I was there for the first part of the first day, and, talking to leaders from right across the country, I found that the overwhelming emotion was relief—relief that the dreadful Morrison government was gone and that there was a government that was actually interested not just in listening to them but in bringing people together in a civil way, to hear different perspectives, powerful perspectives. You saw leaders of big business sitting in the room and listening to the perspectives of the vulnerable. That should be ordinary business of government, but Australia lost its way under the previous government.

The big national challenges are serious, though. We heard our economy—the budget—faces crisis. There are record levels of inflation, falling real wages for the last decade, and a skills shortage crisis exacerbated by $3 billion of cuts to TAFE, training and apprenticeships under the previous government—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They don't like hearing this, do they? It's a radical proposition.

An honourable member interjectin g—

He's yelling out funny little program names. That's the problem—there was never a structural response to anything that the nation faced. There were bandaids, sticky tapes and cute little announcements. Does anyone remember JobMaker? It was going to create 100,000 jobs. It created one per cent of the target, if that—JobFaker! It was a decade of dysfunction and division, with a trillion dollars of Liberal debt that the next generation's going to be asked to repay, and a budget riddled with waste and rorts. It was a test, though, for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Had he heard any kind of message? Did he realise the challenges were serious, that Australians wanted a different kind of politics? No. It's a test that the Liberals failed. He chose to hide at home, to hide in the dark, isolated and humiliated.

Now, Labor didn't make this mess, but we are taking responsibility for cleaning it up. I was delighted to see real practical outcomes at the end of the summit. There will be 180,000 new fee-free TAFE places to strengthen TAFE; income credit for aged pensioners who want to work to earn extra—$4,000 this financial year; work on housing; and restoring a national consensus in favour of permanent skilled migration that does our nation well. (Time expired)