Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the issue that is affecting not just my home state of Queensland or the country but, really, the whole world. That is the COVID-19 outbreak. We have all watched in horror as we've seen—particularly with the events in Victoria—the tragic loss of life, particularly in the aged-care sector. That is something we've talked about at length in the chamber this week.

Even though in my home state of Queensland we certainly haven't seen the impact that we have in Victoria and other parts of the country, it still is something that is affecting us as well. One of the reasons why Queensland has been relatively unscathed compared to other states in Australia is the decisive action of the Palaszczuk Labor government in closing Queensland's borders and a range of other preventative measures.

It has been very interesting being back down here this week in the Senate, because it's the first time we've been here for a while. I remember very clearly the Queensland LNP senators—including your good self, Mr Acting Deputy President McGrath—literally screaming at us from the other side of the chamber about how Queensland needed to open its borders. They were yelling and screaming and carrying on—moving motions and making speeches and asking questions and all sorts of things, abusing Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and the Labor Party for their strong decisions about keeping Queensland's borders closed. Well, haven't they been quiet this week? You can barely hear a mouse from the Queensland LNP in the Senate chamber this week, because they know that they made the wrong call and that the overwhelming majority of Queenslanders are against what the LNP has been saying, and that they are with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk when it comes to our borders.

We all know that the Queensland LNP were only carrying on like pork chops about borders down here in the Senate at the last sittings because they thought they were on a political winner in the run-up to a Queensland election. Didn't they get that wrong? They completely misjudged the Queensland population. They completely misjudged the health risk that was posed to Queensland if we didn't have closed borders. Of course, then we saw what happened in Victoria and all of a sudden they realised they'd got it wrong. I'm sure that Queenslanders, when they come to vote in the Queensland election at the end of October, will very well remember the different positions taken on the issue by Labor on the one hand and by the LNP on the other. In the case of Deb Frecklington, the state opposition leader in Queensland, we are up to 64 times that she demanded the Queensland borders be opened. Of course, that was replicated here in Canberra by her state LNP colleagues. Haven't they changed their tune now? I'm very confident that Queenslanders will remember, at the end of October, that it was Labor, with Annastacia Palaszczuk, that kept their health safe. Equally, it will be Labor that guides Queensland to recovery in the months and years ahead.

In contrast to what we've seen from the Palaszczuk government, we are seeing a range of measures taken by the Morrison government and his LNP cohorts here in Canberra that actually jeopardise the Queensland economy right now and into the future. We know that at the end of September we will see cuts made to the JobKeeper payments and the JobSeeker payments that have been so crucial to so many Queensland families. Of course, only a few months ago the LNP and Prime Minister Morrison didn't want to have a wage subsidy; they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into paying one by Labor, the union movement and the business community. Now, if you get around Queensland, every single business and every single worker you talk to will tell you how vital the JobKeeper payment is to their businesses staying afloat and to them being able to feed their families.

But we now know that at the end of September those rates are scheduled to be cut, which will mean that businesses will not be able to keep people on and Queensland families will have less money in their pockets. Probably the worst part of this is that, at the very time the federal government is intending to pull financial support out of the economy and pull financial support out of Queensland families, what they are also doing is not coming up with any plan around jobs. They want to take money out of the Queensland economy and out of Queensland families, and they have no plan for what the new jobs in Queensland and the rest of the country will be. That stands in stark contrast to the Palaszczuk government, which has a very clear plan for Queensland's economy, particularly based around spending on infrastructure projects, supporting small business and investing in new industries.

Over the last few weeks, now that those of us from Queensland are able to travel within Queensland, I've taken the opportunity to spend a lot of time in regional Queensland. I've literally been from Cape York to Coolangatta and pretty much every major provincial city in between. And what is very clear to me, no matter where I go in Queensland, is that people are desperately waiting for the Morrison government to come up with a jobs plan. They know that the clock is ticking on JobKeeper, on JobSeeker and on a whole range of other financial support that's being provided by the Morrison government. They also know that there is no jobs plan whatsoever from our federal government to make sure that there are going to be new jobs available for when this money does come out of people's pockets. It seems that we can't rely on Prime Minister Morrison or any of his LNP senators or MPs to come up with a plan.

Let me just put three basic ideas on the table that are based on the discussions that I've been having with people right throughout regional Queensland. There are three very easy things that the government could be doing. They could be fast-tracking infrastructure projects to get businesses and workers back on the tools; they could be rebuilding our manufacturing industry, particularly in regional Queensland; and they could be investing in the training that they have ripped money out of over the last few years. Let's just go through them one by one. On fast-tracking infrastructure projects, creating jobs is the key to our regions recovering from the first recession we have seen in 30 years. That's what the Morrison and Frydenberg government have inflicted on Queenslanders and on the rest of the country.