Matters of Public Importance: COVID-19 & the Economy
Mr GORMAN (Perth) (15:54): Australians have been rickrolled by this Prime Minister. He has given up on them, he has let them down and it's clear that the government will hurt Western Australians at any opportunity. In Western Australia, just 22,944 vaccines have been administered. The government have known for more than a year that they would need to administer a vaccine program in every state of the Commonwealth. At one point it might have been that they didn't know what to do, because Gladys Berejiklian had a whisper in the Prime Minister's ear and said, 'I think you should put New South Wales ahead of the queue'—here's the article where she said, 'I think we should put New South Wales ahead of the queue.' But we still wait, day after day.
Then, today, we saw in the West Australian newspaper, a great newspaper, Senator Michaelia Cash saying, 'The coalition stands behind its record.' Well, it's good that she's standing behind their record rather than behind a whiteboard. Their record in Western Australia is terrible. We have the fake money promised by the member for Tangney for the Roe 8 project.
Mr Morton: You want to reallocate fake money, do you? What do you want to reallocate it to, if it's fake?
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O'Brien ): The minister will cease interjecting.
Mr GORMAN: We've had the fake money for the Roe 8, we've got the fake tradie, we've got the fake coalminer over in the Senate and now we have the fake PM with his fake airline ticket to support the tourism industry. The tourism industry have seen through this fake support. We know that it does nothing for Perth, for the hotels in Perth that are doing it tough and are about to have JobKeeper ripped away. It does nothing for the South West. I'll quote the Tourism Council of WA CEO, Evan Hall, who said about this policy, this government's policy, which is supposed to support the tourism industry: 'This is a devastating blow.' He said it is a devastating blow for the tourism industry, at a time when you have a lot of businesses looking to close their doors at the end of JobKeeper. This is someone who's actually in touch with what is happening and with what is likely to happen when, in my electorate, 8,000 people have JobKeeper ripped away in 11 days time. The Tourism Council says, when it comes to Western Australia, 'We are an afterthought at best.'
I heard the assistant minister speaking before, and he said that the biggest issue facing Australia is staff shortages. If they think the biggest issue in Australia right now is staff shortages, I will quote from Flying High and say, 'Surely you can't be serious.' I would have thought that jobs for the unemployed would be a bigger issue. I would have thought ending gender based violence would be a bigger issue. I would have thought rolling out the vaccine would be a bigger issue for this government. But no. Apparently the biggest issue they face is staff shortages.
When it comes to this government and its capacity to support the economy in a really difficult time, it's really great at promising things and then, quietly, off in the background, campaigning against them. Take Senator Dean Smith, the Western Australian senator. You'd remember that former Senator Cormann announced the Perth City Deal: a $1.5 billion investment, including an investment in Edith Cowan University, in my electorate. But then what arrived in the letterbox of my constituents from Liberal Senator Dean Smith? A letter campaigning against the relocation of ECU Mount Lawley, something that his own government announced and is funding. No wonder that, when it comes to the fake announcements we get from this fake Prime Minister, people have a little bit of scepticism about what's going to happen.
But I'll tell you what's not fake. What is not fake is that we're going to see 8,000 people in my electorate lose JobKeeper at the end of this month. That's $3.9 million a week in support being taken out of my local economy. Across Western Australia, 75,000 workers are still relying on JobKeeper. These jobs exist because of that financial support. I remember when the government said that we didn't need a wage subsidy, and they were wrong. Now they're cutting it again, saying, 'We don't need the wage subsidy anymore.'
This government learned last year to backflip. I really do hope that, if things do not turn out as planned and, if, indeed, there are further job losses when they tear away this vital economic support, they see a way through, put their ideology at the door and support workers. Western Australia missed out because of sports rorts, we missed out because of the Safer Communities Fund rorts and now we're missing out because of the Prime Minister's colour coded travel map.
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