Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce made a telling admission that exposed a lot about what has gone wrong with the federal government.
\nAsked about what plan the Morrison-Joyce government had for reducing carbon emissions, Mr Joyce said: \u201cWe don\u2019t actually come up with the plan.\u201d
\nReally? This man is the Deputy Prime Minister. Their job is to plan.
\nMr Joyce\u2019s attitude provides context for the many failures and lost opportunities of the Coalition government, which has been in office for almost a decade.
\nScott Morrison doesn\u2019t think ahead. He has no agenda. He simply occupies space. And if things go wrong, he refuses to take responsibility.
\nFirst, Mr Morrison had no plan for the Black Summer Bushfires, even though former fire chiefs and scientists had explicitly warned him of the danger before the tragedy.
\nThen Mr Morrison bungled the two main jobs he had this year \u2013 rolling out vaccinations and \u00adfixing our broken quarantine \u00adsystem.
\nAs a result, millions of Australians are in lockdown as the rest of the developed world begins to get back to normal. Australians are sick. Jobs are being lost. Students can\u2019t go to school.
\nThen there is economic management.
\nWhile the Covid pandemic has hammered our economy, the truth is that before we even had heard of Covid, debt was at record high levels and growth in family incomes had stalled while costs like healthcare bills were still rising. It was already hard for families to get ahead.
\nFederal Labor understands the \u00adimportance of planning. Over the past two years, we\u2019ve developed a blueprint for an Australia that will be stronger and more resilient than it was before the pandemic.
\nOur plan is focused squarely on jobs and economic growth and it \u00adbegins with modernising our \u00ademployment system.
\nAs things stand, our labour market has serious deficiencies that don\u2019t come through in each month\u2019s unemployment figures.
\nAbout 1.7 million Australians are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they can\u2019t get the hours they need to look after their families.
\nMeanwhile, four million Australians are in insecure jobs. They don\u2019t know how much they will earn each week, which makes it hard to plan or get a bank loan.
\nA Labor government will prepare a White Paper on Full Employment to provide a road map for the redesign of our employment system so it better serves the needs of Australians and their families.
\nI want to work with employers and workers so more people can get work and the hours they need.
\nIn the quickly changing 21st \u00adcentury, we need flexibility and \u00adsecurity.
\nWe need an economy that works for Australians, not the other way around.
\nWe must revitalise Australian manufacturing.
\nThe pandemic has exposed the need for us to be more resilient and we have extraordinary opportunities to build back stronger if we are smart.
\nOur abundance of renewables can drive down power prices, boost productivity and make us more com\u00adpetitive.
\nA Labor government would help businesses capitalise on this gain with our $15bn National Reconstruction Fund, providing loans and other help to kickstart new manufacturing \u00adventures or modernise existing businesses.
\nWe would target sectors including renewable technology, resources and food production, with a special focus on value adding and regional Australia.
\nFor example, Australia is among the world\u2019s largest exporters of lithium, which is used to make batteries.
\nInstead of exporting the raw \u00admaterial, we should further develop our own battery industry here, \u00adproviding thousands of jobs and boosting our national income.
\nNew industries need skilled workers. So a Labor government would create Jobs and Skills Australia, an independent body that would work with employers, unions and TAFEs to ensure we are teaching young Australians the skills needed for these new industries.
\nRight now there are 115,000 fewer Australians in apprenticeships and traineeships than there were when the Coalition took office.
\nThat\u2019s not good enough.
\nLabor would further boost training with our Australians Skills Guarantee, requiring that 10 per cent of all jobs on government-funded worksites be apprentices, trainees or cadets.
\nWe would also harness the power of government purchasing to ensure that when we need to purchase defence supplies or new trains for public transport, we make them here, rather than sourcing them overseas.
\nAustralia has the capacity to manufacture more of what we need.
\nBut we need a government prepared to step up to the responsibility of leadership.
\nIn the 21st century, our nation is perfectly placed to prosper. We sit at the heart of the region that is undergoing the fastest economic growth in human history.
\nWe face a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our economy and build back from this crisis stronger, fairer and more united as a country.
\nBut to seize these opportunities, we must reach out and grab them.
\nIt\u2019s not enough to cross our fingers and hope. We need a solid plan.
\nMr Morrison has no plans. And Mr Joyce thinks it isn\u2019t his job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce made a telling admission that exposed a lot about what has gone wrong with the federal government. Asked about what plan the Morrison-Joyce government had for reducing carbon emissions, Mr Joyce said: \u201cWe don\u2019t actually come up with the plan.\u201d Really? This man is the Deputy Prime Minister. … Continue reading “The Morrison government needs to start coming up with plans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}