It’s always good to get back to Canberra and see all the familiar faces of my Coalition colleagues and the friendly faces of those on the opposing side. This year is shaping up to be as busy as ever, with an emphasis on trying to keep Australians in their jobs.
The announcement of the Government’s $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan comes on top of the $10.4 billion Economic Stimulus Scheme. The previous scheme was a flop, it was a fiasco. Gaming revenue went up but the claim that it was going to create 75,000 jobs was fanciful. The debt is there—we have to pay that back—but the package had no real effect.
Now they are no longer creating jobs they are supporting 90,000 jobs, whatever that means. The Labor Party is morphing the lexicon. So, of the 10,749,400 people who were in work in December, which ones will actually be supported?
Then we have this fanciful and ridiculous idea that we are going to reinvigorate the economy through ceiling installation. It has become Disneyland stuff, the idea that we are going to have armies of green people ascending through people’s roofs to bring back to Australia a sense of economic balance and hope.
These are the sorts of things that we see at the front end of this package. We also see at the front end that this package is going to be about schools. The government are going to build multipurpose halls as a way of reinvigorating the Australian economy. It is a great metaphor, but is it actually going to do it? These are the questions that the coalition will be asking. We demand on behalf of the Australian people that Mr Rudd and the Labor Government not waste this $42 billion like it wasted the last lot of money in the last stimulus package. We demand the capacity to do this job in the Senate and to make sure that Mr Rudd and the Labor Government are held to account.