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09 Jun 05:45am

Filed under: Economy, Jobs, Labor, Politics, Stimulus Package

There aren’t many things that are more important than making sure someone has a job. If you want to fix inequality and social disadvantage in a community, if you want to give someone a leg-up in life, you find them a decent job.

For the Labor Party, jobs are in our DNA and that’s why it is such an honour to be sworn in today as the Federal Minister for Employment Participation.

Sadly we are confronted with the reality that this week a new set of unemployment figures will come out and they will probably show more Australians are out of work.

I will be working day and night with every level of government, employers and workers, small business, unions and industry, to keep people in jobs.

We are in the worst global downturn since the Great Depression, and unemployment rates are soaring around the world. While Australia’s unemployment rate is currently 5.4 per cent, unemployment in the US is almost 9 per cent, 8 per cent in France, Germany and Canada, and 7.1 per cent in the UK.

The global recession has a long way to go, and no country is immune from it and its effects.

What governments can do, and what the Rudd Government is doing, is cushion the blow of the global recession on the community.

The key response from the Government has been the Stimulus Plan. There have been three phases. In the first phase we introduced an immediate economic stimulus to support business and jobs through cash payments to families, pensioners, veterans, and low income earners. We also increased the First Home Owner Grant and provided a tax deduction for small business.

The second phase invested 70% in infrastructure to support jobs, including the largest school modernisation in Australia’s history, the construction of more than 20,000 new social and defence homes, road and rail upgrades, and free ceiling insulation for up to 2.9 million Australian homes.

The third phase was the Budget’s Nation Building Program to support jobs over the longer-term and set Australia up for the future.

Stimulus construction projects are already underway, and we are seeing a war-time like effort: federal government working with state government, working with local councils and industry working with unions to roll-out around 35,000 Stimulus construction projects.
Yesterday I visited an insulation manufacturing plant in Western Sydney to see firsthand how the Stimulus Package is supporting jobs.

In December last year, as economies around the world were collapsing, this insulation manufacturing plant was feeling the pinch too – operating at only 50% capacity. They are now operating at 100% capacity, running the plant 24/7 to keep up with demand, meaning extra shifts and extra workers.

The demand has been created through the Stimulus Package, which includes free ceiling insulation for households. It means workers whose jobs may not have been certain last year, now have some job security. That means a lot to those workers and their families. The insulation industry has estimated that around 4000 jobs will be created as a result of the Stimulus.

The Stimulus is also providing work for small business, which employs almost 4 million Australians. These work opportunities, combined with the tax breaks the Rudd Government has introduced, allow small business to keep people employed during these tough economic times. Already many small businesses have told me that if it wasn’t for Stimulus projects they would have little work, and might have been forced to cut workers’ hours or even let people go.

During these difficult economic times, some people will lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

We will support these workers – providing training, assistance to find a job, and work opportunities that have been created through the Stimulus Package.

I am determined to make sure we don’t see a generation of children growing up in this country with unemployed parents, because their parents lost their job during the global recession.
And during these tough times, we can’t take our eyes off long-term employment goals either. We must also continue to extend opportunities to Indigenous Australians by providing training and support to prepare people for work.
There are no silver bullets here. This Government cannot stop unemployment from rising during a global recession – no government can.
But through the Economic Stimulus we will do everything we can to keep people in work, and find work for people who have lost their jobs because of the economic downturn.
This is what Government can do, this is what the Rudd Government is doing, and this is what we should be judged on.

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17 comments

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- Lucy says:
  
  07:07am | 09/06/09
  
  You’re kidding aren’t you Senator?
  
  There is little evidence of ‘job creation’ or ‘job maintenance’ from the so-called ‘stimulus package’.
  
  Giving a stack of people some cash handouts didn’t secure their employment.
  
  Further, the budget did contain both cuts in spending and increases in taxes. Both of these measures will cost jobs. There is no debate about this point. Companies can not simply maintain jobs if you are taxing them more and/or removing funding from Government programs.
  
  If you were serious, and given the level of debt you were willing to rack up it really shouldn’t have been an issue for you, the Government wouldn’t have cut any spending in the Budget and wouldn’t have increased any taxes until stability returned in the economy.
  
  Reply
- MarcH says:
  
  08:56am | 09/06/09
  
  Your comment:
  “Jobs are in our DNA” says Arbib. Given the ALP’s history on employment, does the Senator use DNA to stand for “Do Nothing Appropriately”? A more apt expression involving the ALP and jobs might run “Jobs are part of our lower bowel”. Senator we’ll require a colonoscopy to find them, now bend over and say “ahhh”.
  
  Reply
- Steve Atkins says:
  
  09:39am | 09/06/09
  
  Dear Mark,
  
  I hope you have studied carefully at NIDA because it will take great acting skills to put your hand up to vote for an ETS (Employment Trashing Scheme), sorry I mean Emissions Trading Scheme and keep a straight face.
  
  Reply
- iansand says:
  
  09:40am | 09/06/09
  
  Surely the question is not “job creation” but job preservation”. Before the Great Financial Kaboom we had record low unemployment, so there was little room for job creation. Who knows whether the employment contraction has been slowed by the stimulus package? (Although I bet the roof insulation installers are doing just fine. And the school renovators. And any infrastructure people outside NSW.)
  
  There is almost certainly room for criticism of the government’s response, but so far the Coalition are looking like a bunch of whining children who are living in a past in which the meltdown failed to happen.
  
  Reply
- Lucy says:
  
  10:23am | 09/06/09
  
  To iansand - the only reason the current Government is in a position to be spending the money it is, and claim to have the lowest level of debt compared to other nations (which it constantly claims) is because to Coalition delivered that to them.
  
  The ‘past’ as you put it, has provided the funding for the ALP’s position - something the Government acknowledges when it is overseas, but doesn’t like to admit here.
  
  It may well be that the money the Government is spending proves to be the best possible response, however, it is churlish to pretend the ALP miraculously created the budget position they actually inherited. Particularly when many of the measures that helped deliver the budget position I am referring to were voted against by the ALP opposition.
  
  Happy to give credit where it is due - but that applies historically as well.
  
  Reply
- mo says:
  
  10:32am | 09/06/09
  
  If you don’t deliver by the next election please don’t bother to contest, just lower your head and bow out.
  
  Reply
- dave says:
  
  10:36am | 09/06/09
  
  Mark, Research in Oz & US shows when big retailers and duopolies move to regional towns there is a net loss of jobs. Inequality? But you take sizeable ‘political donations’ from the duopolies don’t you? (also read Zumbo’s anti-competition)
  
  Reply
- David C says:
  
  10:51am | 09/06/09
  
  Please can you tell me (in plain english please) how many jobs the government has created so far, how many jobs it has saved and more importantly how much it has cost?
  
  Reply
- iansand says:
  
  11:08am | 09/06/09
  
  To Lucy: Absolutely correct. But don’t you think that statement, in itself, is living in the past? The surplus was created in the good times. My problem is that the Coalition is behaving as though the good times have persisted. They appear not to have noticed that a couple of the economic parameters have changed a tad in the last few months.
  
  To David C: I doubt anyone can. It would be a silly government which did nothing because no one can offer precise quantification.
  
  Reply
- dave says:
  
  11:09am | 09/06/09
  
  And independant studies show that the un/under employment figures to be above 10%. Spreading Howards convenient ‘low employment’ spin/meme does not encourage constructive discussion on the real issues or solutions Mark.
  
  Reply
- watty says:
  
  12:27pm | 09/06/09
  
  Arbib, the “Arthur Daly of the Right “suggests that the “stimuli” saved our bacon whilst he is well aware the mining industry and other excporters were the real reason we escaped the axe.
  
  As for the hundreds of thousands of jobs supposed to be created by the Labor Party’s “stimuli” that is ,yet again, a bit of whiteman dreaming.
  
  Reply
- stephen says:
  
  02:09pm | 09/06/09
  
  The Government could, temporarily at least, actively discourage the outsourcing of labour, from telemarketing to aircraft maintenance. (I’m sure even the proponents of free trade would not baulk at this one)
  
  Reply
- Ian F says:
  
  02:58pm | 09/06/09
  
  Where in any advice from either Treasury or the IMF is there any support for the proposition that making the labour market less flexible won’t have consequences in respect of the level of unemployment? If the Minister for Unemployment is still around after the next Federal Election his central task will most likely be that of seeking comradely sinecures for former MPs and staff now associated with his woeful NSW Government.
  
  Reply
- Paul says:
  
  03:02pm | 09/06/09
  
  I really wish commentary was informed commentary. Simply lots of opinions expressed here.
  
  No mention of the economic change wrought by Keating (& Kelty), no mention of the mining boom that created the wealth, no mention of the proper place of debt & deficits in national economies and no mention of OECD data.
  
  Its like this economic/jobs/deficit debate is by “decibel democracy” (whoever shouts the loudest wins) or “cliche competition” (the most spin wins), or even “sound-bite gastronomy” (the tastiest 8 seconds wins)!
  
  Sad really, for such an educated mob
  
  Reply
- DJC says:
  
  04:16pm | 09/06/09
  
  Sadly, its taken less than a week for The Punch to descend into yet another propaganda vehicle for the Labor Party. Do we really need Maxine McKew or Mark Arbib or any other talentless ABC/ACTU/ALP hack who happens to be rostered on for Public Reeducation duty that day to ram Lachlan Harris’ latest glib catchphrases and focus group approved one liners down our necks? They already have Malcolm Farr, Laurie Oakes, Red Kerry and the like working for them, please lets have The Punch become a pollie-free zone. Its bad enough having to listen to the Government’s overly rehearsed and badly acted rhetoric during Question Time let alone having to read the same nonsense all over again on a website thats supposed to be a commentary. Politicians already have avenues to get their message out. How about leaving this one for the rest of us?
  
  Reply
- Bob Simpson says:
  
  05:55pm | 09/06/09
  
  Mark, you’re living in ideological dreamland! And, if you’re one of the Prime Minister’s favourites, we should be really worried. Have you ever created a job by taking a personal and financial risk, developing an idea, planning and executing a marketing strategy, selling the product or service at a loss, then break-even, then profit, ensuring you’ve got enough cash to see you through, employing people, training them, building them into a team, retrenching the one’s who are unproductive, negotiating the demands of unions, producing the goods/service, providing customer service to secure future business, planning the next day because of the issues you are going to confront? These issues are what small business owners confront daily, six and seven days a week. If you have created this way, why are your thoughts and words so contrary?
  
  Reply
- Elizabeth Jarvis says:
  
  05:55pm | 10/06/09
  
  I for one think Howard and Costello’s massive surpluses were economic vandalism on a grand scale.
  
  We go on about debts, but building up massive surpluses means the Government is not spending the money they’re collecting on the things they should be providing for us - better health facilities, education, roads, infrastructure and so on. Surely when times are good you should be investing in things that will improve the nation.
  
  Howard and Costello ripped the guts out of public hospital funding and didn’t do near enough nation building.
  
  Whether the ALP does a better job is yet to be seen, but at least they have a plan to try. Turnbull and his mates are a mob of whingers who would gain some credibility by talking about how they would be dealing with the financial situation rather than the usual sniping which the populace is completely sick of.
  
  Reply