Additional Comments by Family First
The global financial crisis is very serious and most
Australians are fearful about its impact on their families and their
communities. Their greatest fear is the loss of their job and the ramifications
of that loss on their families, their homes and their communities.
Family First believes it is appropriate for the government
to put forward a stimulus package and that a stimulus package should be passed
by the Senate. The government should not have its pockets full of money or
avoid going into deficit when fellow Australians – our family, friends, and
neighbours – are in trouble.
But equally Family First believes this package should do
more. It should be amended to help those people who have been forgotten by the
government – those 100,000 people who will lose their jobs over the next year
regardless of whether this package goes through or not.
The Treasury confirmed in the Committee hearings that by
June 2010 there will be another 300,000 unemployed Australians. Of those
300,000 people, there will be 100,000 Australians who will lose their jobs over
that period and the balance will be people who enter the labour force and
cannot find a job.[1]
Family First believes those 100,000 people who will lose
their jobs have been forgotten by this package.
Family First has put forward a Get Communities Working plan
designed to help the forgotten 100,000 who will lose their jobs regardless of
the government’s stimulus package.
Family First has been discussing with the government diverting
$4 billion in the package to a new Get Communities Working plan investing in
local communities across Australia, which would help create jobs for these
forgotten 100,000 people.
These are human beings whose worth cannot be defined by
numbers on a calculator.
The government's $42 billion stimulus package ignores these
people.
Family First's Get Communities Working plan would create
25,000 to 33,000 jobs.[2]
However, as Family First's plan only needs 10% of the total
stimulus package (about $4 billion), then it will of course create far more
jobs, per dollar spent, than the Rudd Government’s plan.
In fact for every 10% of the Rudd government’s stimulus
package Treasury estimates an average of up to 9,000 jobs will be supported and
sustained.
Treasury estimates the Family First plan will create 25,000
to 30,000 jobs with the same amount of money.
The Get Communities Working plan would fund local government
and charities to undertake community projects that will employ people from the
forgotten 100,000.
This plan would help keep families in their homes and be
useful to their community.
Now more than ever people need help, particularly in Victoria
given the devastating losses of lives and homes following the horrific
bushfires.
Family First wants to help those Australians who, within a
year, will be without a job and without government support from this package
and who will desperately need a life line.
Senator Steve Fielding
Leader of Family First
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