Mr TAYLOR (Hume—Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation) (15:36): It is a great pleasure to speak on this matter of public importance on jobs today. I am surprised that Labor has chosen today to talk about jobs. If I were the Labor Party, I would not be talking about jobs at all this week. It is always important when we talk about a topic like this to be thinking about the history. History is a great leveller. It tells us much about how to understand any particular issue. It is important to remember that in the six years of the last Labor government the Keynesian taps were turned on. There was 4.2 per cent spending growth a year, which is pretty Keynesian by any measure. We have an economist over here, the member for Shortland, who went to a very good university. Unfortunately, they did not learn how to link spending growth to jobs. Despite the fact that there was 4.2 per cent spending growth, we saw the unemployment rate rise from just 4.4 per cent in November 2007 to 5.7 per cent in September 2013. We heard from the member for Chifley about youth unemployment. Let us look at youth unemployment. For 15- to 24-year-olds the youth unemployment rate rose from 10 per cent to 12.7 per cent over the same six years—that is 13 per cent, which is the number he quoted. We saw 200,000 jobs lost under Labor. The jobless queue grew by 200,000 people. They always look for excuses. That is what you expect from the Labor Party. But in the period when Bill Shorten was the workplace relations minister the number of unemployed people increased by around 72,000. The only job he cares about is his own. From November 2007 till the end of Labor's time in office, 128,800 manufacturing jobs—one in eight manufacturing jobs in this country—disappeared completely. During the two years of Labor's carbon tax 125,000 more Australians joined the unemployment queue. This is economic vandalism if we have ever seen it. If we want an example of economic vandalism, let us look at the way Labor has looked at the loss of jobs in Victoria at the moment. It is astonishing that only three weeks ago federal Labor deliberately declared its intention to close down thousands of blue-collar jobs. Mr Conroy: No, it didn't! That is untrue! Mr TAYLOR: You should listen to this. Federal Labor senator Sam Dastyari moved in the Senate to close down power stations, such as Hazelwood, as well as major industrial facilities around the country. Make no mistake, messages such as 'You are not welcome,' and 'We want to close you down'—from your own senator—are heard loud and clear by business and investors around the world. Indeed, this is the very policy federal Labor took to the recent federal election, and that message has been exacerbated by the decision of the Victorian Labor government to triple royalties on Victorian power stations in the Latrobe Valley. That is job creation, Labor style. We know they talk about jobs plans—the last time I saw a jobs plan from Labor it looked more like something from the Soviet Union in the 1950s—five-year jobs plans that deliver nothing. That is exactly what we saw under Labor. Since the coalition came to office, in September 2013, 474,300 jobs have been created, with employment standing at just under 12 million in September 2016. That was with one per cent spending growth, as against Labor's four per cent. We have created far more jobs than in the time under Labor. Under this government employment has continued to grow, rising at 1.4 per cent over the last year. This has been a focus for this government, whether it is tax cuts for small businesses, whether it is historic free trade agreements, whether it is a record investment in targeted infrastructure from our fantastic urban infrastructure minister. We have seen serious growth in jobs, serious investment in the economy and a serious focus on the real job creators in the Australian economy, businesses. Every dollar of tax that is paid for a public sector job has to be paid for by a business somewhere. They are the real job engines, the real job creators, of our economy. That is who we back to create jobs in this economy.