News Topic: Jobs

House of Representatives 03/06/2021

Mr KHALIL (Wills) (16:10): Victorians are doing it really tough under this lockdown. I and many of my Victorian colleagues are heading back to Melbourne tonight. I’ll be kicking the footy with the kids, taking very long walks, playing board games and doing all the things that Victorians are going to do to get through this lockdown. But we all know there is a huge mental health impact on all Victorians as we go through this lockdown.

I want to say in this place that Victorians are Australians, too. Victorians need a Prime Minister that doesn’t have to be forced, pushed and cajoled into providing support, whose first instinct is not to abandon Victorians but to come immediately to their assistance. Victorians need a Prime Minister who will take responsibility willingly, not shirk responsibility shamefully. Victorians need a Treasurer who is not mean-spiritedly refusing, initially, to provide any emergency funding for small businesses and workers in Victoria. As I’m sure my colleagues do, I welcome the announcement of support made just now by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, but why did it take them a week? Why did it take the state government, the federal Labor opposition and the people arguing and begging for them to step up to push them into a position they should have taken immediately of their own accord? If Team Australia means anything to them, surely it means providing support to fellow Australians in Victoria, not arguing against it for an entire week?

But we don’t have such leadership. We have a Prime Minister whose first instinct is to pick a fight, to play politics, to see where the politics takes him, to wander wherever the political winds blow and then, and only then, be forced into the right position—not because he cares but because he realises he has to cover his political tracks. Those opposite have to spend taxpayer dollars to patch over their political problems, not because it’s an investment in the economy or the future of this nation or that it’s the right thing to do. Nowhere is this clearer than when you look at the government’s two fundamental responsibilities, which they continue to shirk: federal quarantine and the vaccine rollout.

On quarantine: it’s actually in section 51 of our Constitution. It’s their responsibility. From the beginning of this crisis, there was an expectation that the federal government would come up with the resources, the planning and the policy to set up federal quarantine facilities that are fit for purpose. They have not done so. This goes beyond shirking responsibility. This is an egregious abdication of responsibility to the nation. The federal government could have set up safer quarantine facilities like Howard Springs in the Northern Territory. Look at the stats: Howard Springs, zero outbreaks; hotel quarantine, 21.

On vaccines: I said last year—and I wasn’t alone—we need to have contingencies in place. Buy six or seven vaccines. Get the supply right. Sign the contracts. If they all work, that’s great, fantastic; we’ve got a surplus. We can help our Pacific neighbours with a surplus. We can be leaders in the region. But it was pretty clear-cut that not all of them would work. We knew that. When those opposite did start to take responsibility for the rollout, they just stuffed it up. I can only describe it as incompetence. They told us four million Australians would be vaccinated by 1 April. They missed their target by 3.4 million.

This MPI says that the government have no plan for the nation. But it’s so much more than that. They have no vision. They have no care. They have no commitment beyond saving their own political skins. That’s all they care about. When they do spend and make commitments, like they did today, it’s to cover up a political problem. Australians deserve better than this mob. A federal Labor government will build dedicated quarantine facilities in every state and territory, fix the vaccine rollout, invest in manufacturing mRNA vaccines like Pfizer in Australia, and start a mass public information campaign, because we actually care for the people that we represent. Australians deserve better than this mob.

Federation Chamber 23/03/2021

Mr KHALIL (Wills) (17:34): The priority of any federal government, any Australian government, should always be the Australian people. We as parliamentarians are elected to serve the Australian people and are elected by the Australian people to do so. Every decision that this parliament makes should have the Australian people at its centre. That’s why I’m slightly embarrassed to be standing here speaking on the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s interim report into Australia’s skilled migration program, which fail to put the Australian people first.

There are still two million Australians either unemployed and looking for work or underemployed and looking for more work, and this figure is only set to rise at the end of the month when the government ends JobKeeper. Despite this, we have this report which recommends a new migration plan that would prioritise foreign workers over Australians for jobs like hairdressers, carpenters, electricians, seafarers, cooks, motor mechanics and many more. These recommendations do not put Australians first. This will undermine the ability of Australians to get jobs by making it easier for businesses to bring in migrant workers. And the report recommends that the government weaken labour market testing and expand the number of occupations on the skills shortage list to include chefs, veterinarians, cafe managers, seafarers, motor mechanics, cooks, carpenters, electricians and many other hospitality roles, with no consideration of what this means for Australians looking for jobs now.

These recommendations also see the scarce quarantine spots and scarce spots on flights to Australia go to some of these migrant temporary workers. This is when there are still 40,000 Aussies stuck overseas trying to get home. In September, the Prime Minister promised stranded Australians that he would get them home by Christmas. That didn’t happen. It’s March and we’re still waiting. And now government MPs on this joint standing committee on migration think that it’s a great idea to start filling up those all-too-rare spots on flights and in quarantine with foreign temporary workers. It makes no sense. For the government to end JobKeeper and increase JobSeeker by a mere $3.57 per day and now place businesses and foreign temporary workers ahead of unemployed Australians and Australians stuck overseas—all in the same month—is really an insult.

The issue here is what we have as a vision for this country, with respect to our immigration program. As a son of migrants, the immigration debate does not offend me, and here’s why. I’m an Australian. I’m very proud to be an Australian. My parents came from Egypt 50 years ago to settle in this country. I think we have to have the debate about immigration and migration to ensure our best economic, social and cultural future. Prime Minister Morrison’s contribution to this debate is to make a virtue of reducing permanent migration. He stated back in 2019, before the pandemic:

… we brought the permanent migration rate down to its lowest level in a decade by focusing on the integrity of the visa system and prioritising Australians for Australian jobs.

That’s what the Prime Minister said in late 2019. I have a message for the Prime Minister: when I talk about Australian jobs, it’s about Australian citizens. I’m talking about people with Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese, African, Latin American, Lebanese, Italian, Irish and Indian backgrounds, and new Australians from every part of the world. That’s who we are as Australians. We’ve come from everywhere. That’s part of our permanent migration program. We’ve settled here, we’ve made a life here and we’ve contributed. When I talk about jobs for Australians, that’s what I’m talking about. Permanent migration has actually made us one of the most economically prosperous and successful multicultural nations in the world. The way the Prime Minister put it, he was proud to declare that he’d reduced permanent migration, as if this were a good thing. And here’s the rub: not only was he talking up the reduction in permanent migration as a virtue; while he was doing that, what was really actually happening under his watch, both as immigration minister and later as Prime Minister, was an increase to the numbers of temporary migrant workers into this country.

We, as a nation, have a history of welcoming migrants to this country, asking them to join us not just temporarily but as new Australian citizens. Like I said, immigrants like my parents from Egypt and millions of other Australians have been central to our cultural life, our social life and our economic prosperity. When our borders do reopen, I know, and my colleagues on my side of politics know, that we must repeat this success—the success that we saw, in particular, post World War II—and renew our commitment to increasing permanent migration post COVID-19. And this migration program must continue to reflect the principle that our acceptance of migrants is not based on their ethnicity, their faith, their place of birth or their gender. Of course, with that principle come proper stringent health checks, security vetting and so on that migrants need to meet to ensure that they can come into the country.

I want to make a point about the temporary migration that I touched on. It’s a stopgap. It’s there to fill skills shortages. It’s important to keep our economy ticking over—absolutely. When you’ve got shortages, you need those workers if you can’t fill them with Australians to do those jobs, but there are also a lot of problems, and we’ve seen this: wage theft, breaches of workplace rights and poor conditions for these temporary workers. That needs to be addressed. There was a 2019 report which suggested that as many as 50 per cent of temporary migrant workers may be underpaid in their employment. For eight long years, this coalition government has moved by stealth to what we would know in some parts of the world as a guest-worker model. The rise in the number of temporary work visas has been astounding. There are, I think, two million temporary work visas, mainly in Sydney and Melbourne. That puts a lie to the Prime Minister talking about congestion-busting when he reduces permanent migration. All the while, he’s increased the number of temporary migrants that have created some of the pressures in the housing market or in other parts of our economy. For eight years, this government has moved to this model while dropping the permanent migration numbers. This government is breaking the immigration model at the heart of our success as a nation post World War 2.

We are only going to succeed post COVID in our economic recovery if we get the migrant composition right. If we go back to the model where we are really serious about permanent migration, skilled migration, people will want to come to this country and give everything of themselves to their new country—to settle here, not to be here for a couple of years or send money away and then go again—and become Australians. That’s what we want to see. That’s what will help us succeed in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery phase. Our future as a nation depends on us getting this policy right.

House of Representatives 23/03/2021

Mr KHALIL (Wills) (13:39): There are just five days until this government ends JobKeeper. I spoke last month on behalf of local businesses in my electorate of Wills that will have to shut down when JobKeeper ends. All this government have done since I last spoke is hand out discounted airline tickets. They have no comprehensive plan to give targeted support to sectors that are still recovering. One example is independent cinemas. Last December, the independent Palace Cinema opened in my electorate in Coburg and, in February, I visited and met with the CEO, Benjamin Zeccola, and talked about the devastating impact of the pandemic.

I’ve always loved going to the cinema. I remember going to the Astor, the beautiful Art Deco theatre, and I remember the excitement of watching a great cinema classic. Now I take my kids to the new Palace Cinema in Coburg so that they can experience the magic of cinema. Independent cinemas are an incredibly important part of our cultural experience, but, with attendance restrictions and limited film production due to COVID-19, many cinemas will simply not survive when JobKeeper ends, yet the government has no plan for support. I ask the government to come up with a plan for targeted support to save our independent cinemas. I have launched a petition to save indie cinema. The government plan to end JobKeeper on 28 March will hurt people. It will hurt family businesses. It will hurt our culture. I call on the Treasurer to extend JobKeeper to support those who still need it.

House of Representatives 17/03/2021

Mr KHALIL (Wills) (10:55): This social services legislation amendment bill 2021 is named, in parenthesis, ‘strengthening income support’—’strengthening’ income support. Let’s think about what this government thinks this word ‘strengthening’ actually means. They’ve tied it to a miserly $3.57 per day increase. That’s what they mean by ‘strengthening’. So it’s gone from $40 a day with some silver coin, a bit of spare change, up to $44.34 a day for a person on JobSeeker looking for a job. That’s the ‘strengthening’. They might want to check their dictionary or their thesaurus when they are trying to name amendments to bills, because that is barely enough for anyone to survive on—$3.57 per day.

People have told me time and time again that on the current $40-odd a day they often skip meals and can’t afford fresh food. Let’s say you’re at Woolies. What can you get on your shopping trip with the extra change the government has so generously given you? Well, you can get 1½ florets of broccoli. You can get one punnet of fresh strawberries—actually, you probably couldn’t, because strawberries are pretty expensive. You can get four lemons—which is probably what this bill is: a lemon. You can get one punnet of cherry tomatoes. That will see you through the day. You can get a bag of salad mix. You don’t get all of these things; you get to pick one. You can’t have all of them.

Or maybe you just forget about the fresh food section, as I know so many people are forced to do, and go to another aisle. In the rest of the supermarket, what does your $3.57 extra get you? You could choose to blow the whole thing on two litres of milk—of Woolies brand milk, to be specific. Oh, sorry, hold on. That’s $3.59, so you’d actually be 2c over your budget if you tried to buy two litres of milk. You can scale it down to one litre for $2.39. With the $1.20 that you’ve got left after you’ve bought your milk, maybe you can get a can of tuna for $1.15, or a can of beans or a cup of two-minute noodles or a can of Heinz tomato soup—but you’d be very lucky to get that one, because that’s on special at the moment for $1.10; usually it’s a lot steeper than that.

In all seriousness, these are the choices, the actual choices, that 1.3 million people in our community who are on JobSeeker are making. They will be making that choice with their miserly $3.57 increase—the ‘strengthening’ increase this government has so generously proposed. These are the choices that people who have been on the old Newstart know all too well; they’re all too familiar with making those choices every day.

These are the choices that await the around 100,000 Australians, according to Treasury’s own estimates, who may lose their jobs when the government cuts out JobKeeper payments on 28 March and they are forced to turn to JobSeeker and the very generous increase being proposed. Locally, in my electorate of Wills, the government ending JobKeeper will affect 2,898 of the people that I represent who operate businesses. It will actually affect 11,996 workers in my electorate.

Those of us on this side, I and all of my colleagues in Labor, want a substantive increase to JobSeeker. We’ve been calling for this. I’ve been calling for this substantive increase for years—since I got elected to this place—an increase that means that people can live in dignity while they’re on their job search, not in poverty. Clearly, $3.57, even though you might label it ‘strengthening’ is nowhere near that. It goes nowhere near enough. It doesn’t go far enough. However, we will pass this bill. We’ll pass it now because we don’t want to delay even this miserly increase reaching people that actually need it, because it’s better than zero. We’re pragmatic, and we’re realistic. That’s why we’ll do the right thing. But we’ll be very clear that Labor, as a party of government, will do the work as an opposition ahead of the next election to come up with a plan for the right increase, a substantive increase, and support an investment in jobs for these 1.5 million Australians.

Others in this place will play their political games with the usual empty political stunts, like the Greens political party, who will no doubt put up amendments to the bill with increases that can never pass because only the government can pass money bills—we know that. But it won’t stop them and others, potentially, from moving such amendments, even though they have no chance of success in this place or in the Senate and will actually, potentially, delay even this minor increase—which you have so generously decided to bequeath upon these Australians! But, playing politics with people’s livelihoods is not good enough.

I refer to the government so generously bequeathing $3.57! In contrast, Labor and I are committed to a substantive increase if we win government. That’s why we won’t play political games right now. We’re the only political party that can form government and deliver the increase that will change lives for the better.

This is a complex issue. We don’t doubt that. Many people have been focused on the rate itself—rightly so, because it has been too low for too long. But it’s also much more than the dollar rate itself; it’s about getting the balance right throughout the whole framing of this, about making sure that people can live in dignity, not in poverty, and making sure that there are jobs out there for people to actually apply for, because, right now—there’s what?—one job for every 13 or 14 unemployed Australians. Some of the minor parties will tell you the rate should be $80 a day, but it’s not as simple as that. That would mean that people, mostly women, would have the perverse incentive or disincentive to leave their part-time work, because mostly women have part-time and casual work, in favour of JobSeeker. So, some of these other plans, these political stunts that we might see in the coming days, would actually incentivise women to leave the workforce. So, it is also about the type of work that’s out there for women in society and the issues around part-time work and the casualisation of the labour force.

Some of these minor parties won’t really care about this. They’ll talk about the rate as a dollar figure, but they won’t tell you about the consequences, because they don’t have to worry about the consequences—minor parties don’t form government. Nothing that they put forward will ever become a reality, because, after all, they’re not a party of government. But, unlike the minor parties, who have no regard for the consequences, or the government, which is actually ideologically bound to the consequences of its own bill, we actually will do the work necessary to take this issue seriously in all of its entirety to look at the rate, to look at the issues that people face in the workforce, to invest in job creation and to deal with the broader issues that are facing what is almost 1.5 million Australians today.

A future Labor government will actually look out for them in the best possible way. We won’t delay this bill, even though this $3.57 is miserly and pathetic. We’ll make sure that it gets to them. But we, as a responsible opposition, will also do the work necessary to look out for them in the economic recovery that this nation faces going forward.


Watch my speech in Parliament calling on the Morrison Government to not withdraw support for families, businesses and other sectors by cancelling the JobKeeper payment too soon.

26/10/2020

Peter Khalil: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Finally the government is recognising the importance of Australian manufacturing. We can and should be a country that makes things, absolutely. The importance of a strong manufacturing sector is actually the Labor Party’s DNA. We know it creates jobs and builds our economy. Yet, under this coalition government’s watch we have seen the sector contracting by their own hand. Effectively, they booted car manufacturing out of this country.

Frankly, as much as this motion is well intentioned, it is this government’s track record which is abysmal when it comes to Australian Made and Australian manufacturing. No amount of smoke and mirrors or marketing sleight of hand—or even muting me surreptitiously—will actually fool the punters into thinking that this government supports manufacturing. The recent budget manufacturing announcement made by the government was all photo op and no follow-up.

The coalition government has spent seven years attacking and undermining Australian manufacturing, and now they really want us to believe that they support it. It shouldn’t take a pandemic and a recession for the Morrison government to start talking about the importance of manufacturing in Australia. Manufacturing has been declining for years, aided and abetted by the coalition’s policies over the past seven years. The decline has been very much felt in my electorate of Wills, in the north-west of Melbourne, particularly with the loss of the Ford factory in Broadmeadows back in 2016—just outside of my electorate.

Meanwhile, you’ve had COVID-19, with a devastating impact own local employment, and now Australia is reliant on offshore manufacturing, which has really put supply chains at risk. We need to take this opportunity to create new jobs in my electorate of Wills and across Australia. We must get Wills back to work and we must get the rest of Australia back to work, and a strong manufacturing sector can do just that. If we get it right a strong manufacturing sector can deliver world-class products, incorporate the best technologies and provide good, secure jobs that our workers need and deserve.

Australians know Labor will actually bring manufacturing back home. Labor’s national rail manufacturing plan, announced by the Labor leader in his budget reply, is a fantastic and a substantive start. Our country has the skills and the know-how. We just need a government that not only has a plan to do it but actually believes in it. We have a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild the economy and move Australia forward. I want to see a future made in Australia.

We can absolutely do more to promote and celebrate things that are made in Australia. In building our manufacturing capabilities we must also promote and support our local, small- and medium -sized family businesses, many of which are local manufacturers. In my electorate of Wills there are 295 manufacturing businesses spanning from coffee makers and operations to vibrant breweries and contemporary furniture design. The north of Melbourne has a very strong legacy of manufacturing with over 98 businesses being in operation for 30 years or more, that’s a lot of corporate knowledge and a lot of history. Forty-one of these businesses are family owned. I have met with many of them, including Silver Lynx Furniture, who expressed to me the difficulties they are having competing with cheaper overseas imports in the furniture business.

Small businesses and medium sized businesses are the backbone of our economy. They contribute a third of our economic activity. They keep millions of Australians in jobs and are responsible for paying the wages of more than half of our entire workforce. It’s time for the government to step up with genuine support for local manufacturing, not just talk—talk is cheap. We want real, substantive policies that invest in the opportunities that are there. Genuine support for local, small- and medium -sized businesses is what is going to get this economic recovery going, not just more marketing spin.

Labor has a genuine plan—if we were to win government—to bring manufacturing jobs back home. We’ve got substance to our plans. We will actually make a difference by investing in manufacturing and opportunities for people in all sectors to get a job and by bringing those jobs back home. Labor’s plan is substantive. It’s real. It’s ready to go. I will applaud this motion.

19/10/2020

Peter Khalil: On the Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020: I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong by those on the opposite side, on the government benches, but, as I recall, this was one of the Morrison government’s key budget policies. So the manner in which we’ve had to bring this forward for debate this afternoon after question time tells you everything about how this government operates. We’re talking about the Prime Minister’s office—or the marketing department, which is probably the entirety of the Prime Minister’s office—working overtime to pitch to the media that Labor might not support this bill; they’re trying to get all the smoke and mirrors happening and the sleight of hand, to play the political wedge. It’s not about the actual substance of the bill; it’s not about having it brought before parliament so we can debate it, so we can look at it and bring it up to the light, as the previous speaker, the member for Rankin, has rightly pointed out. No—they just want to play politics on this. And it tells you everything about this government that one of the key policies in their budget was used in this manner to play a political game in the Press Gallery corridors.

In many respects, during this pandemic we have seen a very substantive argument made by our side of politics to be constructive around the packages put forward by the government—to hold them up to the light, as was said by the member for Rankin—but also to be supportive of what is necessary to get Australians through this once-in-a century tragedy and this once-in-a-century pandemic that has caused such devastation around the globe. Yet, the government wants to play politics with these packages. We have been calling for wage subsidies from the start of this pandemic, to support our vulnerable workers, businesses and communities. In fact, the member for Rankin was arguing for this back in March and February.

I remember the Prime Minister was reluctant even to go towards a wage subsidy. Maybe he saw the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, go there and thought, ‘Oh well, I better go there too.’ Maybe it was the so-called national cabinet, where the premiers made the strong argument that we had to have a wage subsidy for this pandemic. But he was reluctant—let’s not forget that—and he was pulled towards that policy package by those other factors that I mentioned. Of course, what do we get? We get a cookie-cutter package and a cookie-cutter approach. And the cracks that we’ve seen formed over the last several months have become chasms. The Grand Canyon of policy packages swallowed up a million casual workers, who are left behind. It swallowed up people like carers, people in the arts sector and people like temporary migrants—so many demographics have missed out or been left behind because of the way that the government has designed their JobSeeker and JobKeeper packages.

I said to myself early on: ‘It must be because they rushed it. It must be because they went headlong into this and it was all about responding to the pandemic.’ You give them a bit of the benefit of the doubt, but when you look closely at the cracks that formed and the chasms that formed from them, it all adds up. It’s clearly an ideological set of decisions to leave out big chunks of the Australian population—big numbers of people in Australia have been left out. It makes no other sense to me. In many respects, not only has the Morrison government’s response been slow, reactive and somewhat uncoordinated; there’s been a deliberateness in the manner in which they have made decisions about who gets support and who doesn’t. And that deliberateness, for me, is what we have been arguing against: the decisions they made to leave out people.

With JobSeeker, for example, we know that unemployment is on the rise. In my electorate, we’ve got 11½ thousand members of my electorate who’ve been relying on JobSeeker to get by, and another 26½ thousand in my community who’ve been reliant on JobKeeper through this pandemic. Again, we supported the packages for those very reasons. And there’ll be more jobless as we head towards Christmas. Those numbers are going up. When we look at this JobMaker package—as the previous speaker alluded to—it has some similar problems in structural set-up to JobKeeper and JobSeeker, in the manner in which they’ve left people out. There are 928,000 Australians over the age of 35 on our unemployment benefits who were deliberately excluded from those hiring subsidies. They were deliberately excluded. Us pointing that out as an opposition doesn’t mean we don’t support the support package for young Australians. We know how hard they’ve been hit by the pandemic. We know that this is a generational issue for them. So of course we support those elements of it. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore this or we shouldn’t focus on this issue. The government is once again deliberately leaving out a big chunk of Australians from these packages. We don’t want these Australians to miss out. The government’s budget was a real opportunity to set out a plan for economic recovery and reform that actually tried to be as inclusive as possible for as many Australians as possible. They missed that opportunity, and I can only surmise it was for those ideological reasons that they deliberately left out certain numbers of people—excluded them.

Everyone’s been going on a bit about how the government is great: ‘Look how much they’ve spent—we’ve gone a trillion dollars into debt, with $507 billion spent in the budget.’ Hold on. It’s not just how much you spend, right? They’ve never taken the lessons of understanding this. In relation to the manner in which the previous Labor government dealt with the GFC, they were very critical of the spend. But it’s how you spend that money. It’s how you go about putting stimulus into the economy to cover the most vulnerable in society, to make sure that you hit those sectors, those industries, those areas, to give those people a chance to recover. That’s what it’s about. That’s what it’s about for us as a social democratic party, where we intervene to make sure that we support the most vulnerable and those who need it, and to stimulate the economy so that, based on their hard work, they can keep going and survive and then flourish. But those opposite criticised us for that, for the selective spending that we made. Apparently that wasn’t good enough all those years ago. Yet they’ve gone and spent money. We use the old cliche of a drunken sailor. It wasn’t that at all—they were sober when they were making these decisions. There was a deliberateness about the manner in which they left certain people out of these packages, and they’re doing it again. They are doing it again with respect to the JobMaker hiring credit.

There is no comprehensive plan for jobs across the economy. The cuts to JobKeeper and the cuts to JobSeeker in the face of rising unemployment beggar belief. Again, the government are not understanding the need in the community. As the previous speaker, the member for Rankin, said, we’re going to work through our own assessment of this particular bill as it goes through the Senate committee. But there are a number of issues with it which we have raised and will continue to raise. This get-the-headline approach that I noted—this big announcement with the big headline, the sleight of hand, the marketing department working overtime to win a headline in the papers or on the radio without any substantive follow-up—is one problem, of course. Let’s look at the substance as well. It’s not just all talk, no action.

The government have alluded to their track record. Even this morning I heard members of the government talk about the Youth Jobs PaTH program or the Restart wage subsidy. Let’s have a look at those. The Youth Jobs PaTH Program was widely criticised for a lack of outcomes. There was little or no training and there were wage subsidies to big corporates like Coles and Hungry Jack’s. The Restart wage subsidy program, which they point to when we say, ‘You’ve left people over 35 out of this’ is another failure. It failed to get older people back to work and is undersubscribed. The government spent half of what it was meant to spend on the program, and 40 per cent of workers on the program were without work within three months. So we really hope beyond hope that we don’t see the same flaws in this hiring credit program, but I won’t hold my breath, given their track record.

There are a number of questions that need to be answered around this bill. That’s why we will be holding it up to the light. It will be examined as forensically as possible around the operation and integrity of the scheme. Again, looking at the track record of this government on some of this, I don’t hold my breath. Let’s start by looking at the eligibility criteria. For social security recipients below 35, there is no requirement for employment to be secure or permanent. It does nothing to encourage security at work and security of jobs. We know that this government has presided over an increase in insecure work and underemployment for many, many years—in fact, the seven years the government’s been in power. We know the design of this subsidy encourages a company to double their subsidy by hiring two workers on 20 hours each instead of one full-time employee, encouraging more casual and more part-time work and more insecure work. And there are no reporting requirements to prevent wage theft and other endemic exploitation that disproportionately affects younger workers. We know that. The evidence base is there. The regulatory oversight to date and the integrity measures have not been made clear. And we don’t even trust the government to put workers and their interests first.

The government really love to point out that they are doing something for younger people. What they’re doing, in fact, is once again pitting one demographic—one generation, if you like—against another, making younger Australians compete with older Australians. What’s the plan for older Australians, apart from those opposite pointing out they have the Restart program, which I’ve discussed? The competition that’s coming in the face of a deepening jobs crisis is real. The government themselves are forecasting that another 160,000 Australians will join the unemployment queues before Christmas. We know that. That’s in their own data, their own statements.

Another matter that is disturbing about this bill is the blank cheque element of it. Nothing is stopping the government handing out a blank cheque to distribute to businesses in whichever electorates they see fit. The two-year blank cheque for undefined employment and workforce participation programs under this legislation does raise concerns with us. Why? It’s not rocket science. Again, we’ve seen the government’s track record on this with sports rorts 2.0. We’ve seen how they go about it. It’s important, then, that this new wage subsidy scheme be designed with integrity, to avoid the temptations the government have all too often succumbed to with respect to these types of rorts. So we’re going to continue to ask questions around that and around the way the government implements this.

Looking at the design of JobMaker as well, are there design flaws that will prevent businesses even taking it up? The intersection of JobKeeper and the hiring credit is of real concern as well. The hiring credit takes over from JobKeeper, and its design stipulates that a business has to have additional workers in order to receive a subsidy. The businesses that are reliant on JobKeeper will ask the question: will we have recovered enough to take on more staff beyond the JobKeeper-supported staff levels? I’m from Victoria. I don’t think businesses in Melbourne are yet ready and able. Once they lose JobKeeper they are more likely to lose staff, not add them to their payroll.

It’s like this government—the marketing department in the Prime Minister’s office—has suddenly discovered young people: ‘Oh, wow, there are people under 35!’ After seven years they’ve discovered them and they’ve gone out and tried to pitch a story that suddenly they have a concern for them. Again it’s the sleight of hand, the smoke and mirrors. When you scratch the surface you see the cracks, and the cracks become a chasm. The flaws are so evident, and they really show what this government is about. Do you really have a care for the future of young people? It’s not much of an ask. Australians can’t afford to have this government play politics with their future, and that’s why we’ll continue to forensically examine this bill.

19/10/2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
TELEVISION INTERVIEW 
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA

SUBJECTS: Victoria’s COVID-19 Response, JobMaker Scheme

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Joining me live now, my political panel, Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman. From the Labor party, Peter Khalil. The latest roadmap, it does mean the vast majority of businesses cannot reopen, Peter Khalil, this must be disappointing for many? 

PETER KHALIL: Yeah, look, it is, Tom, and we’ve gone through over a hundred days now of pretty strict lockdown and restrictions, and Victorians have done an amazing job, frankly, to get the second wave under control with down to, I think, two cases yesterday, one the day before. There’s been a lot of talk and criticism about the speed of easing restrictions, if you like, or letting businesses get back into play. I just want to say this. I’ve been very constructive in my criticism. It’s not partisan, it’s not political, frankly. This is a pandemic. I’ve criticised the Victorian Government around the hotel quarantine, the contact tracing capacity and so on. But let’s not conflate the mistakes that are made with that, with the response which was necessary. If you look at the UK, just in the earlier story, they were at the same number of cases that we had per day. When we were at 723 cases, three months ago, they’re at 763. Now they’re looking at, you know, 15,000 new cases a day. The same with France, 34,000 new cases a day, so they’ve really gone into an outbreak which is becoming very difficult to control. So, we’re talking about the fact that Victorians have actually saved lives. I mean, some 67-70 people have died a day, in the UK, admittedly, they have larger populations, but the point is we have done what is necessary to control the second wave. The pace at which you then open up again is important for business, absolutely, and I think the Premier also said that he may actually bring that forward to the 26th of October. 

CONNELL: We’ll see. I mean, you’re comparing it to Europe. You could compare it to other states such as New South Wales. Is there an inherent issue though, the Victorian Government, as you alluded to there and the next ones will be my words, but it’s been responsible, essentially, for this second wave. It’s also up to the Government when to release the handbrakes. I mean, them being in charge of this, but also risk averse because they cannot afford, for their own credibility apart from anything else, a third wave. Is that a bit of a problem? They’re not going to have any risk appetite at all. 

KHALIL: I think you’re–I think you’re assuming a few things there, Tom. You assume it’s all political. I think the risk averse and cautious approach is because we don’t want a third wave. We don’t want people to die. We don’t want to get it out of control. I used the comparison to Europe, yes, but only because New South Wales never had some 750 new cases a day, which we did. And, you know, the UK did three months ago at the same point in time. Admittedly it’s a larger population, but having said, that they know, I think, clearly, that we can’t go back to a similar type of strict lockdown with strict restrictions that we’ve seen over the last three months. So they want to make sure they get it absolutely right. And if it means opening up retail on the 26th of October or the 1st of November in ten or eleven days, then so be it. 

CONNELL: Trent, the message coming loud and clear just seems to be a straight ‘open up, do it now’ from the federal government. Do you agree? 

TRENT ZIMMERMAN: Well, I think Victorians have done an amazing job over the last few months in stamping down on the second wave, but I can also understand the considerable frustration that Victorians must have today. And particularly when they do look across the border and they see New South Wales with a similar, if not slightly higher case load, and see all the freedoms that I’ve been enjoying over the last week, and seeing businesses being able to operate, people being able to get on with their lives, livelihoods being restored every day. And really the measures that Dan Andrews are putting in place is almost a vote of no confidence in his own government’s capacity to manage the virus because New South Wales has demonstrated that if you have got the authorities working with proper contact tracing, with proper controls, in partnership with business to make sure that business is operating in a COVID-safe way, that you can open up and restore the type of freedoms that Victorians I’m sure so desperately want. And at the same time, what we’ve been seeing is obviously the consequences of this lockdown starting to manifest themselves, and what really worries me is just the mental health figures that we’ve seen starting to emerge over the last couple of weeks where the mental health impact being faced by many Victorians is so much worse than the rest of the country. 

CONNELL: So the Health Minister has actually pointed at Melbourne. Even Melbourne is no longer meeting the definition of a COVID hotspot. Does that mean New South Wales should open up to Melbourne now? 

ZIMMERMAN: Well, I understand that there might be decisions about that as early as this week, but they are obviously decisions that the New South Wales Government will make on its health advice. But I certainly think that for regional Victoria– 

CONNELL: But–again, if the Health Minister is saying Melbourne is not a COVID hotspot, wouldn’t the next logical step be for the Federal Government, which has been concerned about the Queensland-New South Wales border before, to start talking about the New South Wales-Victoria border? 

ZIMMERMAN: Well, let’s see what the New South Wales Government does over the next couple of days. I think that there will be some positive moves, particularly for regional Victoria, but we’re getting pretty close to when, hopefully, we can see those borders reopened, and that’s something that I’m sure that we’d all welcome. 

CONNELL: Job subsidy scheme is going to be the order of the bait today. Peter Khalil, what’s Labor actually saying here? I mean, you’re going to support this scheme, but you’d like another one in for older Australians? You’re not going to oppose this from what we can see. 

KHALIL: Yeah, well, we’re looking at it in our caucus tomorrow morning, obviously. The shadow cabinet as well, making decisions around the support or otherwise for the JobMaker scheme. I think the real point here is that you’re looking at unemployed people over 35. There’s 928,000 people aged over 35 on unemployment benefits. And again, this government has kind of adopted these Keynesian type politics, policies I should say, with wage subsidies, but sometimes, very reluctantly, we’ve had to push them to do it. And oftentimes they’ve left big gaps there, big cracks, and left a lot of people out. A million Australians who are casual workers were left out of JobKeeper. A million Australians who are casual workers were left out of JobKeeper. Again, why are you setting people against each other based on their generation? We’re talking about a lot of people in their forties who are going to have great difficulty getting back into the job market. There should be support for all Australians, regardless of their age. Yes, the youth have taken a big hit, and we absolutely support it. That’s why we’re looking at supporting this JobMaker hiring credit, but you’ve got to look at the entire problem. And this Government tends to leave out big groups. Big demographics. 

CONNELL: So Trent, we know young people were the first, in many cases, to lose their jobs from this, but also becoming the first to get them back. Look at any other recession. Older workers are the ones that stay unemployed for the longest. That is a fair enough question, isn’t it? What’s in this budget for them? 

ZIMMERMAN: Well, two points, firstly, this is about ensuring some hope and a future for our younger generations which stand the risk of being decimated by this pandemic. And I think there’s a real moral imperative for us to be providing that generation with some hope. And we know that the consequences of pandemic have hit younger Australians most severely, in fact, job losses and reduced hours four times more than for the general community. And we also know from past experience that it is often young people that are the slowest to be able to return to work. So, there’s no apologies from me about the fact that we’re trying to provide some hope. 

CONNELL: Is that the case? Isn’t it, generally in recessions, older Australians, including the latest cohort that most often going on to Newstart even before the pandemic, the biggest growing cohort were actually people over fifty that were on Newstart for a prolonged period of time. 

ZIMMERMAN: Well, in the last recession, the unemployment rate for young people took fifteen years to recover compared to something considerably less for the general community. But the other point that I’d make is, obviously, that we have a range of wage subsidy programs, some of which predate this pandemic, and all of which are still available. So for workers over the age of fifty there is the Restart Programme which provides subsidies up to up to $10,000. 

CONNELL: Only up to six months. Only up to six months on the dole queue for them. 

ZIMMERMAN: Indeed. And I think that you’ll find that when you look at the course of this pandemic, there are going to be a lot of people that are eligible for that, because we’re talking about an employment impact that hit in April, March this year, so six months have elapsed. But also we have wage subsidy programs for longterm unemployed, for Indigenous people, for families. These are part of the architecture. And I haven’t heard, in the past, Labor complaining about targeted wage subsidy programs. It’s almost as if Labor is saying that you shouldn’t target. 

CONNELL: We’ll have to leave it there. I’m sure this debate will still be going next time we talk. Peter, Trent, thank you. Talk again soon. 

ENDS 

23/09/2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
TELEVISION INTERVIEW 
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING   

SUBJECTS: Victorian Restrictions, Jobseeker, Olympic Games & China. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST:  Dave Sharma and Labor MP Peter Khalil, both my guests. Welcome to both of you, Peter Khalil I’m going to start with you. The Victorian Premier has indicated some restrictions, may be relaxed on Sunday. So that means essentially going beyond that roadmap and its timeline, which is significant, I think, what do you want to see happen? 

PETER KHALIL MP: Well, great news. It’s great news, first of all, for all Victorians, we’ve been in this lockdown now, who’s counting? 90 days, 91 days. 

HOST: I’m not counting! 

KHALIL: Not counting! But school is going back for a lot of kids in the second week of term. That’s a big relief for parents. I’m not sure where the Premier is going to make announcements around, further easing of restrictions. I know that we’re going to get the easing of restrictions that was announced a couple of weeks ago on the 28th of September, but the good news is, and what I would like to see obviously is in relation to the better numbers that we’re seeing, possibly further easing of restrictions, particularly for small businesses, potentially for, you know, the grade three over to year 10, weren’t supposed to come back until I think the 26th of October. Maybe that could be brought forward a week or two, to relieve parents in that space. I’m not sure what the Victorian Premier is going to announce, but it’s great news to hear that he’s going to make an announcement with further easing beyond the ones that he’s already announced. And that’s very good for all Victorians. 

HOST: Okay. So you think that the school return though should be a priority? 

KHALIL: Look, it’s one of my, I mean, there’s a lot of priorities. PK as you know, the parents have been under enormous stress during this period with learning from home. Teachers have done a fantastic job as have schools to try and facilitate this, but kids need to have that social engagement as well. My kids are feeling it and I’m sure yours are and many other parents in Victoria. Also business, you know, there’s a lot of pressure on a lot of small, medium sized businesses. There may be further easing’s there, which might allow, opening up a bit earlier with some of those businesses, but the Victorian Premier is going to be very careful and I think rightfully so, because we want to actually protect the gains that have been made, so we don’t have to go back to a further statewide or citywide lockdown. And, what you’ve heard on your program today about the importance of contact tracing, localised teams, making sure we’re on top of any further outbreaks in the future at a localised level is going to be critical importance as we manage this, over the next 12 months or until we get a vaccine. 

HOST: I think you’re right on kids. My youngest child, Tommy, her only fantasy was to go back to school, which you wouldn’t have expected kids to say a little while ago. So it doesn’t the world change. Dave, what needs to be done before New South Wales can open its border to Victoria. I mean, you’ve always believed that we should have an open country. Clearly Victoria’s rates are getting pretty low. They’re getting much better. Is it time for New South Wales to allow us Victorian’s back in? 

DAVE SHARMA MP: Look, I think, New South Wales should open, reopen its borders with Victoria as soon as it’s safe to do so, now with that obviously, and the Premier in New South Wales, Premier will be guided by the advice of, you know, of the Chief Health Officer in New South Wales and others on this. But I’d expect from the level of community transmission in Victoria is at a comparable level to that in New South Wales, and you know, provided, we can relatively quickly and easily track any Victorians coming into New South Wales. We should be reopening the border and that’s certainly always be the disposition of the state and the liberal government here in New South Wales is to keep borders open as much as possible. Cause we know it’s not just about people’s personal freedoms. It’s also about their relationships. It’s also about businesses. It’s also about the health of the economy and jobs. And these are all elements of people’s wellbeing. 

HOST: Dave Sharma, staying with you and just talking about what might happen in the budget. Do you think the budget should deliver permanent increase to jobseeker, the old Newstart payment? I had Katie Allen on the program this week and she said that the new figures should be higher than that $40 a day. Do you agree? 

SHARMA: Well, I think there will be an opportunity to examine all this. I don’t know if the budget is the right one. I mean, there’s obviously the coronavirus supplement, which has been topping up jobseeker now for some considerable time and that will remain in place. I think we really need to see though where the labor market is at and where the jobs market is at. Some considerable time beyond the, you know, when the budget’s delivered in October (inaudible), this is something that we’ll need to have a look at in, you know, December, January, February, depending on the rate of unemployment, how easily, how many new jobs have been created. We’ll need to tailor that to economic conditions at the time. But I would say that at this time, I mean, it’s important for the government to lend all the support to the private sector and consumption and households that it can, you know, we are in an economic crisis, the likes of which we haven’t seen before. And this is when the government is the sort of the buyer of last resort. The fiscal stimulus of last resort needs to play in and step up and play an important role. 

HOST: Peter Khalil, I know Labor has been calling for a permanent increase to jobseeker. Government’s not going to do it in the budget, but clearly you just heard Dave Sharma there and others, it’s on the table. Why do you think it needs to happen immediately? Why can’t they just be an increase, extension as there is? 

KHALIL: Well, because PK, and I’m bemused by Dave’s answer, when else is not when the Federal Budget is being, actually given, do you talk about these major measures and the other reason PK is at this economic recovery as Dave pointed to needs economic, fiscal stimulus into the economy. Now cutting jobseeker at this point in time, on Friday actually, this Friday does not make any sense. Okay. You’re sucking money out of the economy. People on jobseeker are not putting the money in a sock and hiding it under the bed or buying shares with it. They are spending it in the economy. Okay. And it’s no good for Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison to say, Oh yeah, but we’re going to announce all these other parts of a package in the federal budget. Well, you’re giving with one hand and taking with the other. It makes no sense. And so the budget is the time to do it. We should be locking in the permanent increase for another reason that is to allow people who are on jobseeker to live with some level of dignity. And the other point of course is that, Dave, there are 13 applications for jobs vacant, every one job vacancy, and that is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. The reserve bank has pointed out that we’re going to see some patchiness around unemployment. It may actually increase again going forward. So it makes no sense whatsoever to cut jobseeker or jobkeeper at this point in time. 

HOST: And Dave Sharma, just to you, the founder of a global coalition of MPs is pushing for the international Olympic committee to reconsider Beijing’s hosting of the 2022 winter games. Do you think China should be stripped of hosting the games? 

SHARMA: No, I don’t. I think, you know, there are certainly elements of China’s behaviour, both in Australia, but also abroad and domestically in China that we find troubling. And we speak out about that from time to time, but you have to think about what the Olympics is designed to do and what its purpose is. You know, the Olympics, isn’t a forum for moral censure or even a diplomatic forum. It’s about people to people ties and sports and the athletes fundamentally. And I think when you look at what the Olympics has managed to achieve in years past, it’s often created a higher level of openness and the societies and countries that host them a greater concern about their international reputation and generally speaking an improvement in their behaviour. It doesn’t mean it’s going to lead to a permanent change, but I think it’s actually an opportunity to, have some greater scrutiny of China’s behaviour, including towards its own citizens and push for reforms and improvements in areas that matter to us. But I don’t think stripping, I think stripping them at the games or any sort of move towards that end would have almost the sort of opposite effect of that intention. It would lead to a hardening of domestic opinion within China. Probably a clamped down on freedoms and less engagement with the outside world. 

HOST: We’re out of time. Thank you so much to both of you, a little shorter than usual. We’re going to talk to the Minister in a moment. Joining us this afternoon, Peter Khalil, he’s of course, a Labor MP and Liberal MP, Dave Sharma. 

ENDS