ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - BILLS - JOBS AND SKILLS AUSTRALIA AMENDMENT BILL 2023 - SECOND READING
Typical Labor speech: laced with sarcasm, dripping in sanctimony. The member for Spence can do so much better than that. This morning he and I were at the CropLife agriculture industry business breakfast after the budget, and he introduced me to Angelo Demasi, from his electorate. Angelo is the chief executive officer of the South Australian Produce Market and somebody who is committed to making sure that there are jobs and skills in the electorate of Spence. I commend Angelo for his efforts and what he's doing for the horticulture industry.
I would urge and encourage the member for Spence to be a little bit more positive. He'll clip and paste that onto his social media platforms, and the unions will just love it. That's what the Labor members do: they come in here and they talk up the unions because those are their big donors. This comes from somebody who was a member of a union for 21 years, so I understand, recognise and appreciate the roles that unions do play, but it's all about balance.
This bill, the Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill 2023, is about Labor yet again appeasing their union mates. In this, we're going to have three members representing employee organisations—that is union officials; that is union mates. That's what Labor is all about. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and the unions are calling the tune. We know that. Everything about Labor is about appeasing their union mates, and so much the pity, I say as the member for Spence leaves the chamber.
Jobs and skills are important. The member for New England sits beside me. He and I were very disappointed at the budget announcement last night about the withdrawal of funds for dams, for water infrastructure. If there's one thing that can improve jobs and skills in this nation, boost agriculture and floodproof the nation, particularly inland Australia, it is water infrastructure. Funding for dams at Dungowan, Peel River and Tamworth was withdrawn—totally taken away. Why? Because Labor doesn't believe in building dams.
At Wyangala Dam, we're trying to raise that wall by 10 metres to provide an additional 650 gigalitres of capacity. What will 650 gigalitres do? It will floodproof Forbes. It will floodproof the Newell Highway, which was cut off in the last major flood before this one for weeks and weeks and weeks. It's one of the most important, busiest and most productive arterial highways in inland Australia, yet it seems these days that every time the Lachlan floods, the Newell Highway is cut off.
The state of that road is abysmal. I appreciate that the minister for infrastructure, Catherine King, went out with the then New South Wales minister for regional roads, Sam Farraway, and provided some funding for Newell upgrades. That's good—not nearly enough, but it was welcomed. But Rose Jackson, the then shadow, now Minister for Water in New South Wales—
Mr Jones: Excellent minister!
Mr McCORMACK: Not an excellent minister—says: 'We're not going to build water infrastructure at Wyangala. What we're going to do is build better roads to provide escape routes for the people of Forbes.' Go figure. Better escape routes—really? Why wouldn't you build a better piece of water infrastructure, to grow agriculture and to floodproof Forbes, rather than build better escape routes for the people of Forbes who have been flooded six times in 12 years? It just doesn't make sense. When you build water infrastructure, you improve jobs and skills. It's like Snowy Hydro. It's like the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's nation building.
Labor talks about lowering emissions by investing funds in regional Australia. Regional Australia is already doing its part to lower emissions—much more so than urban Australia. But Labor doesn't recognise that fact. It thinks regional funding and jobs and skills funding is all about lowering emissions and doing those sorts of things. It's about building capacity, building community capacity, improving jobs and skills. At the moment you can't find workers in regional Australia, more's the pity. What is the government doing about it? It beggars belief.
I was talking to Neville Jolliffe, who has just bought into the independent grocery store at Coolamon. He already owns the one at Forest Hill, near the Royal Australian Air Force space—you might be interested to know that, shadow minister for veterans' affairs. Neville and his wife, Jodi, can't find workers. This is the situation not just for grocers, hairdressers or coffee shops; it is right across regional Australia. In every area of endeavour, you can't find workers—and it can't just be because of COVID. But what's the government doing about it? 'We're putting in place Jobs and Skills Australia and we're appeasing our union mates.' We're not getting the advice we should from captains of industry, from those people out in real Australia—and by 'real Australia' I mean regional Australia—to see what we can do to lower inflation, to see what we can do about improving the job lots and livelihoods of those captains of industry in regional Australia who want to employ people, who need to employ people, who want to make sure their business doors stay open.
I often hear about the trillion dollars of Liberal debt. It's nowhere near a trillion dollars—nowhere near it. The Labor talking points don't acknowledge the fact that, by investing the money that we did during COVID, we saved at least 60,000 lives. We saved at least 700,000 jobs through JobKeeper. We saved millions of small businesses, which were able to keep their doors open because of the investments we made and the funding we made available during that time. Of course, we're still not out of the woods when it comes to COVID-19—and you would agree with that, Acting Speaker, the member for Macarthur—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Freelander ): Indeed.
Mr McCORMACK: because you know how many people are, unfortunately, still in ICU and still dying because of COVID-19. It seems a long way from when James Kwan was the first person to die, on 1 March 2020, from that insidious disease which has, unfortunately, swept throughout the whole world and taken so many lives.
Jobs and skills are important. As an aside, I am pleased that the member for Albury has been appointed the shadow minister for skills, TAFE and tertiary education in the state parliament. He'll do a good job. He'll keep the Minns Labor government honest and accountable. I commend him on his promotion and look forward to working with him, as a near neighbour, in our electorates in southern New South Wales to do what we can for jobs and skills. You ask any abattoir owner anywhere in regional Australia, and they will tell you that jobs and skills are so very important. They'll also tell you about the shortage of workers they have in filling those many positions. We all like protein—well, not all; perhaps the Greens don't, but most of us do! The member for Moreton likes his steak; his father was a butcher, and is a good man!
You talk to any abattoir proprietor—Chris Cummins, of Breakout Meats, in Cowra, is expanding his operations so he can potentially move into the US market. Heath Newton, of Junee abattoir, is a prime lamb specialist. Will Barton, in Gundagai, is so short of workers that he sends me pictures of himself on the kill room floor—and he doesn't want to be on the kill room floor; he wants to be out marketing his meat, which is some of the finest meat in all of Australia, but he can't do it because he's got to don the white coat and work on the slaughter room floor. Just before I came in here I spoke to Charlie Sheahan, the Mayor of the Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council. He tells me the Australian Meat Group, which operate out of Frankston, in Melbourne, are the new owners—they've taken over from Manildra—of Cootamundra abattoir, which actually closed in February 2017 but AMG invested $170 million into that abattoir. It was slaughtering sheep when it closed. It's going to be multispecies, primarily cattle, when it reopens—sometime later this year, hopefully. With $170 million of investment, they're going to need workers, jobs and skills.
I look forward to potentially working with Senator Murray Watt, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, or whoever it needs to be, to make sure that they have got the jobs, skills and workers in that abattoir. To that end, I'm pleased that Minister Watt is meeting with EC Throsby—Brett Peterkin is the director and Nick Doherty is the CEO of that Young abattoir; they also operate out of Singleton—to do what they can about the Indonesian certificates. It's so important. We need these abattoirs to be their best selves, not just for our domestic supply but for those export markets, which, I might add, are growing agriculture to $100 billion by 2030. That was something that we did in government. It was something that we did as Nationals. It was something that the member beside me, the member for New England, did when he was the agriculture minister. It was something that the current Nationals leader certainly pursued in his time as minister for agriculture, and it is something he now pursues as the shadow minister. This is so important.
When it comes to jobs and skills, what we don't want to see, and what I find a bit insulting, is the provision by which the Pacific engagement visa has become a lottery. Australia shouldn't be a lottery. Coming to Australia and becoming an Australian citizen and getting on all the benefits that Australia has via welfare et cetera should not become a lottery for Pacific workers. When you talk to these Pacific leaders and go visit these Pacific countries, you learn that, in the past, when Pacific workers have come to Australia, they've learnt skills and trades and that sort of thing and returned to their countries much better for the opportunity and the experience. They've earned money here in both very skilled trades and some not so skilled trades and sent that money back home. In some of those countries, it's a large proportion of their GDP.
What this lottery system, I fear, is going to do is take the best and brightest. They can come to Australia with no guarantee that they'll work here for any longer than a day, and they'll be eligible for all the benefits that Australians have. It's a pathway to permanent residency, and some might argue that's a good thing, but we don't want a brain drain out of the Pacific either. We need to be good neighbours. We need to be a country which provides that opportunity for our Pacific friends without draining them of their best and brightest and hardest working, and we need to be able to—
Mr Jones interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: Thank you, Member for Whitlam. Thank you for saying that you agree. It is important. As the shadow minister for international development and the Pacific, I urge the government to look at that very seriously because, when it comes to the Pacific, we have to be good neighbours. I commend the government for what they've done, building on the framework and the architecture that we put in place with the step-up in Pacific relations and negotiations, and I want to see that continued.
I must say that money in the budget last night for foreign aid and the Pacific, in particular, was a little bit further in the forward estimates than some might like to see, but it's important that Labor build on the good record that we had as a coalition government in this space and particularly in the Pacific. Many Pacific workers work in our meat-processing plants and in highly skilled areas as well. I'm not saying that meat-processing plants don't have highly skilled workers; they absolutely do. You look at Teys in Wagga Wagga and the investment that they've made in their chill-room. It's probably second to none in the Southern Hemisphere. They're exporting to the world. The meat that we provide out of the Riverina and elsewhere in country Australia is the best in the world. Our farmers should be very proud of that fact.
That's why, in relation to the Jobs and Skills Australia Amendment Bill, we urge and encourage the government to adopt the very sensible, practical and pragmatic amendments that we've foreshadowed. They will certainly make sure that this legislation works effectively without it being just one more union slush fund and without it being one more appeasement to the unions. As I said before: everything in balance. Unions are important. They play an important part. I understand that; I get that.
Mr Perrett: Hear, hear!
Mr McCORMACK: I hear 'hear hear' from the member for Moreton, and I acknowledge that, but we can't have unions running the show—we cannot. We can't have Labor coming in here and the only business they talk about are those businesses which they run picket lines out the front of. Jobs and skills are important. They are certainly most important in regional Australia, which carried this nation through COVID.