Andrew Bolt: Stacked jobs summit a Labor hoax

Labor’s Jobs and Skills Summit, with its stacked union mates and left-wing activists, is a disturbing exercise in “guided democracy”.

I laughed when I finally saw the list of 142 people the Albanese government invited to its jobs and skills summit on Thursday and Friday.

Does it really think Australians will fall for this ludicrous and sinister scam?

Well, maybe not. Maybe that’s why it kept that list secret until Tuesday night.

This is a Labor hoax – getting “consensus” for radical changes by stacking its summit with union mates, left-wing activists and fellow travellers, and marginalising the few voices of opposition it’s let in for the appearance of “debate”.

Let’s not sugar-coat this.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lied before the election – less than four months ago – when he claimed “Labor has a plan to lift wages”, “Labor has a plan for the future”, “Labor has a plan to rebuild the Australian economy” and “a plan for secure work”.

In fact, it had no plan – not publicly – for jobs, wages and skills, and is instead inviting a cheer squad to purportedly suggest one.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese marks his 100th day in office at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

But this plan will be one Australians never got to see or vote on before the election.

That makes this summit anti-democratic – a disturbing exercise in “guided democracy”.

Just look at the 142 people Labor invited to give it an excuse for its agenda, and an elephant stamp.

Unions represent just 15 per cent of workers but were invited to send 33 representatives – 23 per cent of the delegates. One is from the rogue CFMEU, which has been fined more than any other union in the past decade.

Here are more examples of Labor’s farcical stack.

Also included are six Labor premiers and chief ministers, but only two Liberals.

Two left-wing think-tanks are represented, but no conservative ones.

Bank chiefs were excluded, and are represented instead by a former Labor premier, Anna Bligh, head of the Australian Banking Association.

But included are two union-linked superannuation funds – HESTA, whose chairman is former Labor minister Nicola Roxon, and AustralianSuper, whose deputy chairman is president of our top union body, the ACTU.

Also in the crowd is a battalion of global warming activists, academics and green energy carpetbaggers: the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Smart Energy Council, Westcoast Renewable Energy, green-hydrogen spruiker Andrew Forrest and green investor Scott Farquhar.

Remember, this summit is touted as a brainstorm on how to get your wages higher and get trained workers to where they’re wanted.

Yet among the delegates are two from the Human Rights Council, three from big welfare groups, one from the National Council of Single Mothers & their Children, one from the Equality Rights Alliance, one from the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils and six from Aboriginal organisations: the Cape York Institute, Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation, Coalition of Peaks, Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation, Supply Nation and Blackrock.

Even Dylan Alcott, the wheelchair tennis champion, is there, plus two youth delegates who I would not let anywhere near a plan to design our economy. Not until they’re at least a decade wiser.

There’s more, but you get the idea. The few business representatives in the room who aren’t green or greedy for the sugar-hit of mass immigration are going to feel like lepers – unless they give in and go along with the kumbaya vibe. And an agenda that goes far beyond better wages.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers at the Jobs Summit in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

Don’t fall the spin that this is just getting people together in a way the biffo-happy Liberals wouldn’t. Or as Treasurer Jim Chalmers put it on Wednesday: “This is our big chance to put an end to a decade of needless conflict and division, missed opportunities and warped priorities.”

What nonsense. In fact, Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison also got the ACTU and bosses together to talk about – what a coincidence – jobs, industrial relations reform and training.

As he (prematurely) gloated two years ago, he detected co-operation and “we now need to turn that into co-operation to create even more jobs”. I said then he was being played, and, sure enough, even the tiny compromises that were worked out came to nothing after Labor said no in the Senate.

Yet Labor, this time in government, insists delegates should now “leave the ideology and the old battles at the door”.

Hypocrites.

Labor just wants to shame anyone who dares stand against the “consensus” it’s rigging at this summit.

But the ominous shape of that “consensus” is now forming: yes to mass immigration, more union power, more gender politics.

It’s stuff that a room of the Labor elite will cheer, but Labor didn’t dare put to a vote of the Australian public.