Senator STOKER (Queensland) (10:47): It's a pleasure to rise to continue my address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech to the Senate. I was talking about the importance of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 at the time we paused our consideration of this matter last. Tackling union lawlessness and holding unions to account is vital to business confidence and profitability. Profit seems to be a dirty word, but, when businesses are profitable, employees are the ones who benefit. It allows for investment and expansion, and the creation of more jobs with the chance to move into new and more challenging roles and to be remunerated for that additional responsibility. And so profit should be, in fact, a virtue. It's quite funny that in the political sphere it isn't treated that way. This bill is about doing something important for the members of unions, recognising their needs and wants. For example, I think of the needs of teachers, of nurses and our many trades. These three sectors still have really high union membership numbers compared with unions in other sectors such food service, arts or recreation, mainly because of the importance of accessing insurance and representative services rather than necessarily to gain a political affiliation. And so often, I get reports that these groups don't trust the quality of the union representation that they're getting in the bargaining process, because, too often, unions have arranged kickbacks for themselves at members' expense, forgetting or selling out the needs of the workers they were established to work for. We need to be better at communicating the benefits to both the worker and the economy of getting these bills over the line. Ensuring there is integrity in our union sector is vital for the economic performance of this country, and that flows into the opportunities for the families of all Australians, and it flows into the pockets and the aspirations of households nationwide. I might turn, then, to say a few things about this government's plan for the increasing number of jobs that we need to see in the economy throughout this country. We know that the best way to help Australians get ahead is to ensure that every Australian who can work is able to get a decent job, something that reflects their skill set and provides an opportunity to get ahead in the future. That's why we target our efforts at growing the economy—that's how we get more Australians into work, it's how we tighten the labour market, and it's how we increase incomes for all right across the country. Since coming to office, 1.4 million jobs have been created by the private sector under the conditions that have been established by this government. More than 400,000 people who had never had a job have now been employed. This is a really significant achievement and one that this government is committed to continuing into this term. Not only does 400,000 people who'd never had a job getting a job mean that those people have more money in their pockets but it means the rest of the Australian taxpayers carry less of the burden of the social security support that's needed for those who can't or aren't working. It also gives each and every one of those individuals and the households that depend on them the dignity and hope that comes with being able to plan for a future, and they're setting an example to their families and children, which is so very important in making sure that we are building generations of diligent, capable and aspiring workers in this country. It's pretty exciting stuff. That's not to say there are no challenges to the economy in this country. Of course there are. There is low inflation. There is relatively low, by our long-term standards, wages growth—although it does exceed inflation and it exceeds the performance of most of the OECD—and that's something of concern to Australians and something that will require the continued diligence of this government. There are challenges posed by the trade war that is evolving internationally, and, in many ways, we don't have as much control over that as we do with what happens within our own shores. It's up to us as a government, and importantly here in this chamber, to do what we can to ensure that we are stimulating in every way possible jobs growth and to bear in mind that every individual should have the right to a job. Workers aged 45 and over, for instance, have so much to offer in the workforce. Last year, my Senate colleague Minister Cash announced a wonderful trial program: the Career Transition Assistance Scheme. This scheme is for people aged 45 and older and has been designed to help them get job-ready. We hear so often that people who have been engaged in a career for a long time can face challenges at this point in their life, and the need to retrain or reskill or shift their skill sets for this next phase of their lives is something that can be really difficult and confronting to people who face that situation. But it comes down to confidence. That word keeps permeating this address. Confidence in older workers is vital to them believing they can find a great job, and this scheme helps to identify the transferable skills they have and how those skills can be adopted to new industries or how they can be retrained slightly so they can apply their skills to a new trade. This scheme helps transition a person's already great contribution into the next phase of their life. It also helps to develop their confidence in the use of technology, including the ubiquitous smartphone, apps and social media technology, which are so familiar to young people and many of the people in this room, but which, at times, have been avoided by the older generations—and that's a difficult thing if you want to go for new job opportunities at that point in your life. This scheme is just one small way that this government is determined to do all it can to ensure the creation of 1.25 million jobs over the next five years, including 80,000 new apprenticeships. In Queensland, the current unemployment rate is six per cent. That compares to the national rate of 5.1 per cent. In her budget speech last month, Queensland Treasurer Ms Trad said that 199,000 jobs had been created in Queensland since 2015. But, as quickly as jobs were created in Queensland, the state government, through their mismanagement and lack of action, lost just as many. According to the Queensland Government Statistician's Office, 42,400 jobs were created in Queensland in the year from May 2018 to May 2019, but 33,000 were lost. They were mostly in the regions, and mostly in Mackay, in fact, which lost 11,300 jobs over the past 12 months. These are all just numbers to Queenslanders in the regions, who have watched in horror as jobs have seeped out of their local economies because Labor will not allow major projects in their region to get off the ground. The six per cent unemployment rate across Queensland is—sadly and horrifically—nothing compared to the Queensland outback region where, in May, unemployment was recorded at 14.5 per cent and youth unemployment, shockingly, hit 24.1 per cent. But what would you expect when farmers are decimated by drought for years and then lose their remaining cattle to floods? Many have now faced fires in the last week or two. Vegetation management laws don't allow farmers to feed their starving cattle mulga without being slapped with fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it's likely the transport subsidy for water, fodder and other necessities will be scrapped by the Palaszczuk government. There is no work out there in the regions and no policy help from the Queensland government to help farmers continue until the rain comes again. That means the efforts of this federal government across the board have never been more important than they are right now. Families across regional Queensland—and, indeed, right across urban and rural and regional Queensland—depend upon this government's economic performance in additional measure to the other states because the Queensland Labor government is just letting us down so badly back home on the environmental front, on the major projects front, and on the budget management and debt front. There is so much riding on there being jobs available for people throughout Queensland. The futures, the aspirations and the very human potential of the people of our state cannot withstand year after year of incompetent Labor administration in Queensland. But Queenslanders should know that we are doing all we can to make up the difference, as we always do on the Liberal-National side.