Mr JENKINS (8:16 PM) —Before turning to the points that I want to make, I would like to make a few remarks about the comments in the latter part of the honourable member for Parkes's speech. I hope that he would not think it too patronising when I say that I understand that he has made those remarks with great sincerity. I do not believe that he is naive. I have some disagreement about his conclusions. But I believe that many of us who have been here longer than he are very acutely aware of the way in which we are perceived outside. I believe that sometimes that is coloured by people's perceptions and observations of question time, and it disappoints me that perhaps that is the only impression that people have of this parliament. I, in turn, am not so naive as to say I understand why that is so. But I would think that, in a way, the debate in this place, whether it be down in the main chamber or in this committee, would be heightened if, in fact, people paid more attention to it—that is, people other than members.

I believe that he is correct, that there should be a greater interchange—that is, true debate between the contributions that are made. It disappoints me that, from time to time, people make set speeches that do not relate to what is going on and to the spirit and the environment in which the debate is going on. One of his National Party colleagues makes interesting observations about the tensions and heat of question time when he describes it as `the parliament's safety valve', that a modicum of the release that is question time enables us to get on with the type of robust parliamentary democracy we have without fisticuffs or bloodshed.

Having said that, I know that there is a fine line. Madam Deputy Speaker, because of the time you do in the chair, you would appreciate that, for those of us who have to listen to the debates, they are a mixed bag. Often the contributions are well worth while; often they are very forgettable. But the point is that this is a parliamentary democracy which has served Australia for nearly a century now. With the differences that are bound in the political scene, we are a parliament that acts in the national interest. Having got to the national interest, I will probably turn to my partisan contribution, but I think the honourable member for Parkes should not give up hope. He should proceed; indeed, I would not want to dissuade him from having some idealistic views about the way in which we should carry out our duties in the parliamentary sense as well as outside, with the many facets that there are to our representation.

I come to the subject that has dominated public and parliamentary debate over the last week or two, and that is tax policy and the GST. It was only on Thursday, 13 August last year that the coalition launched their package entitled `Tax reform: not a new tax, a new tax system'. Two weeks later, the Labor Party launched its package entitled `A fairer tax system with no GST'. Some three days after the Labor launch, on Sunday, 30 August, the Prime Minister announced the election date.

Of course, the election was held on Saturday, 3 October 1998 and the Howard government was returned with a substantially reduced majority and, I make the observation, without even securing half of the two-party preferred vote. I do not dwell too long on that but just state it as I understand that, of course, the government won the election; the opposition lost. But I think that, in the events that have occurred since that date, that is something that perhaps the Prime Minister should have kept in mind.

My concern is that the Prime Minister believes that this period between 13 August, when he launched his tax policy, and 3 October was a period in which the public at large, in coming to a conclusion on election day, was able to dissect and properly understand the GST package. I do not believe that that is the case. I believe that, since the election and the events that have been carried out, there is a better understanding of what was proposed. There is a better understanding of the things that are important that we should be looking at if we wish to improve our tax regime.

Between December 1998 and April 1999 a number of Senate committees inquired into a new tax system. The evidence that was collected by these committees was quite interesting and a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate. At the conclusion of the committee inquiries, the Prime Minister still held the view that in the period between mid-August and the election there had been sufficient debate and he tended to ignore the evidence and the discussion that was created by the Senate committee inquiries.

On Friday, 14 May 1999 Senator Harradine announced in the Senate chamber that he could not support the GST-inspired new tax system. After that there were about 10 days of frantic negotiation and discussions between the coalition government, which at that stage comprised only the Liberal Party and the National Party, and the leadership of the Australian Democrats. On Friday, 28 May, the Prime Minister and Senator Lees announced that they had reached an agreement on a new tax system, mark 2.

In the subsequent days, of course, there have been a number of questions and discussions of what is contained in that package. Of course, we do not know the fine detail and that will be produced, it appears, next week to be discussed in the parliament over the next few weeks. I suppose in that detail we will really see what is the mark 2 new tax system to be presented to the parliament.

In trying to look at the goods and services tax, which basically is the main plank of what is being proposed by the government, I am yet to believe that I have been incorrect in seeing it as being an unfair tax. I do not think that the mark 2 version agreed to by the Howard government and the Democrats is any better. I think that the exclusion of some food items and the inclusion of other food items, and the different way in which the as yet to be finalised diesel concessions work, increases in mark 2 what was already a compliance nightmare for Australian businesses in the mark 1 of the tax package.

There are other things that we do not really know until we have a fuller discussion of what might be the overall impact. The planned removal of the state taxes has been largely abandoned. Only a couple of the bed taxes in two of the states are being abandoned in the first instance, and then there is a staging of the abandonment of other taxes, with a whole swag not to be abandoned but continued.

More importantly, my concern not only with the tax package but with the budget—which seems so long ago and not really the central part of our discussion—is that nothing is being done for jobs. In the revised GST package of the new Howard-Democrats coalition, no mention is made of jobs. The great concern is that, over the past few months, more and more evidence has been found that the GST is a job destroyer. At the present time the European Union is looking at the extent of the negative effect of its VATs, value added taxes, on jobs and employment growth.

The Democrats, earlier in the discussions about this package, set certain hurdles that they thought needed to be crossed in order to meet their requirements for employment. They indicated a cut in payroll tax, zero rated food, replacement of the first home buyers scheme with a GST rebate, zero rated inbound tourism and a reduction in the taper on unemployment benefits, amongst others. This new package, produced by the Howard-Democrats coalition, fails to deliver on these parts of the Democrats' original package. One must come to the conclusion that, according to the Democrats' own yardstick, the package they have signed off on fails to deliver jobs.

Let us look at the extent of compensation in the new package. It has to be remembered that the compensation that is offered in this new agreement between the Democrats and the coalition government is less than half what was offered to and rejected by Senator Harradine.

We have measures, much vaunted by the Democrats, to do with the environment. Yet, as the days go by, there is an increasing understanding that the environment package would have been put in place—nearly in its entirety—without this agreement between the government and the Democrats.

The Democrats committed themselves in a very spectacular way to having books GST free, to avoiding greater taxation of education, to addressing a whole swag of tax loopholes and to preventing erosion of the surplus through the GST package, yet many of these have not been delivered in this package.

The tax package should not be all that is considered. There are many things that we need to address that are not addressed either in the tax package or in the budget which these appropriation bills are about. That is the concern. I am worried that the government has stalled and has now clouded its judgment because it has a plan for a new tax only. This might appear to be simply a piece of rhetoric from our opponents, but to judge by the actions of the government it is where we are at at the moment.

We need to look at a whole swag of other things that are important. Coming from a region where about 15,000 people are unemployed—and nearly 4,000 of those are long-term unemployed—I am disappointed that we are confronted with a budget in which the government seems to admit that it has given up on the reduction of unemployment. Stating that unemployment will remain at 7½ per cent throughout the next financial year does not give great hope to those who are unemployed—even worse, those who are long-term unemployed, many of whom are now part of a growing phenomenon within the Australian labour market: second or third generation unemployed people.

I have always been an unashamed supporter of government intervention—not overall, capital `i' government intervention, but acknowledgment of an obligation to many sectors of the community not to rely just on the market forces. Whilst I might not think that the market forces really result in much benefit, large portions of the community miss out on anything that can be seen as of benefit from the way in which a market operates. That is why I have been one who has been disappointed that the government seems to have stalled in support for unemployed people, and a pseudo labour market program under the title of Work for the Dole will not offer anything else.

I am on the record as saying that I cannot support Work for the Dole in its present fashion. It is not due to the fact that people are asked in return, as a form of mutual obligation, to do certain things; it is the nature and quality of the experience that they are offered. It is not simply that I do not believe that people should not be given the opportunity for a work experience. I believe that many of the people that should—and could—benefit from a program of the ilk of Work for the Dole will have a better experience if there are added things, and if there are proper skills training and proper welfare support, because those are the things that we really need to see.

I know that people like the honourable member for Deakin, who is following me in this debate, are great supporters of Work for the Dole. I know that large numbers of people have participated in that Work for the Dole scheme in his area. I know that he will have testimonies from a number of participants who have had a worthwhile experience. But in the nature of the labour market in the area that I represent, there are not as many people in a state of readiness to have the same and equal positive experience from a program that merely gives the opportunity to turn up and participate in a job. It needs a lot more.

When we have the minister responsible decrying a local government unit like the Brisbane City Council for not participating in the scheme, he has to understand that others make judgments that it perhaps does not go far enough. If we are looking at mutual obligation, it should not be in just simplistic terms. It can be a lot more complex. In variations, the notion of mutual obligation is not just the creation of the Howard government. It is a creation that had some genesis in the previous Keating government but there the type of obligation seen was very much a two-way obligation. I note that the Treasurer, in a change of rhetoric about Work for the Dole, briefly mentioned in his speech that it was a two-way thing. But the Labor government under Keating as Prime Minister saw that the obligation not only went for the income security that the unemployment benefit gives, but also should go to the government giving an undertaking that they try to ensure a definite outcome by way of positive training as well as just the outcome through the work experience.

The other feature about Work for the Dole schemes that I do not understand is this: if they are worth funding under Work for the Dole, why are not the outcomes achieved by the people who work in these schemes worth funding through programs? No matter what they are doing, why do we not as government bite the bullet and understand that, if we do not as small `i' intervention provide the resources to ensure that these types of job opportunities exist, unemployment will remain at 7.5 per cent?

We will be putting hundreds of thousands of Australian people in the difficult position of long-term unemployment, not just a transitory period on the way to a full-time or more successful form of paid employment. We will have more and more people stuck in a cycle of unemployment, with their families stuck in that cycle, whether they be in the suburbs of Melbourne, such as in the electorate of Scullin, or in some of the rural areas, such as in the electorate of the member for Parkes. We potentially have generational unemployment of a grand scale. I think that we need to be looking at ways in which we can ensure that we look above the type of scheme that Work for the Dole is and look for things that will have a longer-term benefit not only for individual unemployed people but for their families and the communities in which they live.

I have, in the past, quoted from John Kenneth Galbraith's book The Good Society. He says:

In the market economy the natural focus of power is the employer, most often the business firm. The rights of workers to join together and assert countervailing authority must be central and accepted.

One of the things that I would implore the government to understand is that there needs to be a mutual effort between large sections of the community, whether they be government, employers or, legitimately, trade unions acting on behalf of the workers, to ensure that we continue to see opportunities given to people for long-term employment, whether that is part time, casual or full time. If we see that form of cooperation and generosity of spirit, we will have the future in our grasp.