Transcript
Roberts.
Thank you Mr. Acting, deputy president. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak to the JobMaker Hiring Credit Amendment bill. JobMaker was announced in the budget with much fanfare. The treasurer announced his headline. JobMaker will support 450,000 jobs. Why didn’t the media think to ask the treasurer to define the word support? His own treasury doesn’t agree with the word support, means what the treasurer thinks it does. Treasury indicated in Senate estimates hearings, that JobMaker will create not 450,000 jobs, but a meager 45,000. 1/10th. This inconsequential measure will not make a noticeable difference to the prospects of everyday Australians. And yet the government is treating JobMaker as a headline grabber. Here’s a brochure from the government, the centrepiece of their quote “Economic recovery plan for Australia, JobMaker. Creating jobs and rebuilding our economy.” It’s right here on the cover, must be true. It’s glossy. Once again, this liberal national government is misrepresenting announcements as achievements. A well-worn ploy that many marketers use and coupled with a glossy brochure. And with diagrams and with high vis vests and headlines and lots of colour. JobMaker is budgeted to cost $4 billion. Yet with only 45,000 jobs likely to be created the cost is actually only $400 million. To put that into perspective the government will spend $400 million on job keeper, in one day, $400 million is one day’s job keeper and then turn to the number of jobs and training places created in this budget. When they’re added up, they exceed the number of people unemployed. The budget,this budget is a hoax. According to the treasurer’s own numbers, this budget will put everyone back into a training place or a job before the next election. Zero unemployment. Didn’t the treasurer add up all these wild claims in the budget and realise that these numbers just don’t add up? The government has led hyperbole run a muck. Then again, working a calculator has never been treasurer Frydenberg’s strong suit. Job keeper itself was out by just $60 billion. The coalition’s restart programme was announced in 2014, as a $10,000 subsidy to help 30,000 older Australians back into the workforce every year. Six years later, And this scheme has helped only 9,000 older Australians a year. less than a third of the 30,000 a year the government announced. Even worse,almost half of those workers terminated, once the minimum employment period ended. That leaves just 4,500 per year. On top of that, many of the businesses that claimed restart we’re not serious about putting on a new employee. Instead those businesses were serious about free money from the government. And that’s the problem with corporate welfare. It turns businesses into subsidy farms, reliant on the government. It creates phoney jobs not sustainable jobs, not breadwinner jobs. It creates weaker accompanies, not stronger companies. It replaces the profit motive with a handout mentality. One nation opposes corporate welfare a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to large corporations. This government’s economic recovery plan for Australia is more corporate welfare more printing money to give to the banks more pumping up the housing bubble. That’s it. That’s the whole plan. If the government was fair dinkum about creating jobs, it would create the right business environment for growth. It would invest in restoring our country’s productive capacity. The productive capacity that’s been destroyed, by a lack of infrastructure by decimation of our electricity sector which is driving manufacturers overseas. We’ve gone from the lowest electricity prices in the world to the highest and manufacturers are leaving in their droves and taking with them their jobs to China, India, and Asia. So restoring our productive capacity includes building dams, new power stations, roads, bridges, and transmission lines. And it involves cutting red tape, cutting blue tape and cutting green tape. And it would involve if the government had courage, comprehensive tax reform. So that we have a proper honest, effective, and efficient taxation system a transparent taxation system. And then let the economy get on with the business of creating jobs and wealth for all Australians. Instead ,this government chooses to promote a casualized workforce. JobMaker is not about creating full-time work. It is the reverse. It motivates indeed drives businesses to replace one full-time employee with two casual employees. Replacing one real breadwinner job, with two junk jobs. The JobMaker protections around higher payroll and head counts allow for this casualization process. This is an attack on breadwinner jobs, jobs that can support families, jobs that can put kids through school and universities. So kids have another option for a better life than did their parents. Remember that Australia. Remember when kids faired better than their parents? under successive Liberal National and Labour Greens Governments. That’s a thing of the past. Our generation is the first generation to pass on less to our kids, not more. Less wealth, less opportunity, less freedom. And the Liberal National Party have form on this. Prime Minister Howard’s Government spent 11 years breaking up full-time breadwinner jobs into junk jobs, casual and part-time work. Jobs that have no bargaining power low wages, less entitlements and less security. And I’ve talked about that many times in the Senate. I’ve got so much data and evidence on that. There is no wealth creation in these low paid casual subsistence jobs. As a result Australia’s median wage has gone backwards over the last 30 years. And why some union bosses have gone along with this is beyond me. But we can talk about that another day. Today we’re talking about the liberal party declaring war on families, war on holidays, war on workers home ownership and war on everyday Australians. trying desperately to accumulate wealth, just to stash a bit away for the future. JobMaker is another nail in the coffin of Australian families. Courtesy of the corporate greed, hubris and arrogance that has overtaken the liberal national party. One nation opposes this legislation, this marketing ploy instead of trying to look good, governments should do good. We need to get our country back to basics. Invest in restoring our country’s productive capacity. That’s what decides our country’s future.
