Albanese’s Jobs Summit a Rehash of Rudd, Keating Labor Policy: Mundine

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during a joint press conference with NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in Sydney, Australia on July 8, 2022. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Former Labor Party National President Warren Mundine is pessimistic about the federal government’s Jobs and Skills Summit saying it is a rehash of earlier ideas and is unlikely to have any long-term benefit for economic growth.

His comments come after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and Treasurer Jim Chalmers locked in the date for the event, a key policy plank for the Labor government.

Over 100 people representing businesses, unions, and political parties will come together for the first two days of September to create a productivity plan for Australia to counteract rising inflation, interest rate rises, slow wage growth, and ballooning debt.

“The themes and outcomes of the Summit will inform the Employment White Paper, which will help to shape the future of Australia’s labour market. It will be led by Treasury, which will invite submissions and engage the wider community over the next 12 months,” according to a statement from the prime minister on July 11.

In response, Mundine pointed to the previous “Australia 2020 Summit” held in 2008 by former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which had a broader purview but was also focused on shaping a future growth path for the country.

Australian Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine speaks at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

“Who remembers that? What was achieved at the 2020 Summit? We had the Tax Summit under [former Treasurer] Paul Keating. What happened there? There were some policies developed, but that was outside of the Summit.” Mundine told The Epoch Times.

“It just shows the lack of vision and the lack of ideas that governments have now—it doesn’t matter what party they are.”

Make Life Easier for Business to Help the Economy

Mundine pointed to a swathe of areas the government should be working on to boost economic growth, including ensuring reliable energy for manufacturing, cutting regulations so that small businesses can grow, and dealing with a struggling education system.

“I have people coming to me looking for jobs, and they’re hardly literate, and you’re thinking, ‘What the Hell’s going on?’” he said.

Mundine is a board director of several companies.

“We also have an insane energy policy. Even if you believe in climate change, you can’t just turn off fossil fuels tomorrow because the grid would collapse. And quite frankly, renewables are not in that position to give you that baseload energy.”

Meanwhile, Treasurer Chalmers has promised that the Summit would not be a talkfest.

“If we can get agreement on some of these issues, and we can get some sense of consensus ... if there’s an opportunity to move quickly, and that’s appropriate, then we'll do that,” he told ABC Radio on July 12.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks during a Labor Campaign Rally in Brisbane, Australia, on May 15, 2022. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

“I wanted [the Summit] to be soon enough so that if there were opportunities for the October budget or the second budget in May or other opportunities to legislate in the Parliament.”

The treasurer said he would be happy to look into how employers could cancel enterprise bargaining agreements without consultation—an area heavily protected by the trade unions.

“The tearing up of agreements has been a problem in our industrial relations architecture for some time,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons why I do think we need to have a look at bargaining and one of the reasons why we haven’t had the wages growth that we would have liked to have seen for some time now.”