Broadmeadow is tough but it needs backing

BROADMEADOWS has always faced adversity but with the decline in manufacturing, this melting-pot of modern Australia needs federal and state backing.

UNEMPLOYMENT in Broadmeadows is 26.4 per cent, higher than Spain and equal to Greece — countries suffering the worst jobless rates among developed nations.

The Employment Department’s disclosure is a social disaster. Worse, it does not reveal youth unemployment or how many 16 to 24 year-olds are disengaged, neither working nor learning, which will be perilously high.

Broadmeadows matters because it symbolises hope. Twice as many Muslim families than in any other Victorian electorate live side-by-side with Christian refugees from Syria and Iraq, seeking a better life beyond the burden of history.

Convergence of Victoria’s most unstable modern administration, the Baillieu-Napthine regime and Australia’s most rigid Right-wing government, under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, has had a cruel impact. Coalition governments are repeating historic mistakes that caused dire consequences.

More than three decades ago, the retiring head of the Premier’s Department, Maj-Gen. Ken Green confessed to me that neglect of Broadmeadows was the greatest failure in the previous generation of Liberal administrations. Lack of a coordinated strategy to deliver social infrastructure and services resulted in social disadvantage.

Victoria’s Baillieu-Napthine Government adopted a “Reverse Robin Hood” strategy, redistributing funding and resources from Broadmeadows to sandbag marginal seats. Shovel-ready infrastructure projects totalling almost $100 million were axed. Cutting $25 million from the local TAFE provider, Kangan Institute, came at the worst possible time during the manufacturing downturn and the Ford Motor Company’s decision to end local production.

Merging Kangan Institute with Bendigo TAFE and moving the headquarters to central Victoria followed; another ploy to win marginal seats instead of governing for all.

Craving the new seat of Sunbury, the Napthine Coalition Government committed to subsidise a breakaway council by redistributing $25 million of ratepayers’ money from the City of Hume, further punishing families in Broadmeadows in another triumph of politics over rational decision making.

Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again, Albert Einstein said, and expecting a different result. Liberal neglect has been systemic for Victoria’s poorest community that for generations has underwritten prosperity with its manufacturing muscle and nous.

Premier Henry Bolte delivered the last Liberal fanfare when he opened the Ford Motor Company’s plant with dancing girls and an orchestra in 1959. Three years later, Australia was producing more cars than Japan.

Three years from now, Australia’s once proud automotive industry will produce its last passenger vehicle. The Abbott Government is promising a discount on Japanese imports as the trade-off for the loss of production, innovation and jobs. Social disruption is yet to be calculated.

Broadmeadows is an iconic flashpoint for defining national concerns: globalisation and the demise of local manufacturing, population growth and multiculturalism, new jobs and a fair go. It has evolved into a united nations in one neighbourhood, where families from more than 140 countries call Australia home.

Prime Minister Abbott has the opportunity to make history, as Australia’s first Liberal PM with his name engraved on a plaque for opening a Liberal-funded project in Broadmeadows. Instead, his Government has chosen to slash more than $500 million from the Automotive Transformation Scheme, expected to accelerate the closure of supply chain businesses, job losses and local anxiety.

I call on Tony Abbott to lift investment in strategies for alternative jobs and reskilling. After wooing blue-collar voters to seize power, the difference between his rhetoric and reality is ruthless. Vulnerable families in the Broadmeadows electorate are the hardest hit by the Abbott Budget, according to the University of Canberra’s analysis, while Sydney seats held by the Prime Minister and Treasurer feature among the Liberal electorates suffering least.

Adversity has forged resilience and innovation in Broadmeadows. Major employers support a “local jobs for local people” strategy that dovetails into Labor’s election plan for lifelong learning and economic development to drive 100,000 jobs statewide. Labor in power would establish an independent body, Infrastructure Victoria, to take the politics out of vital projects.

Placing Broadmeadows beyond regret, the news and election cycles in my inaugural speech to the Victorian Parliament almost four years ago, I called for a co-ordinated, bipartisan strategy to connect the disconnected, so families were never again relegated to the status of the truly forgotten people. As long as politics remains a winner-takes-all game under Coalition governments, these families struggle to see where they belong in “Team Australia”.

FRANK MCGUIRE IS THE LABOR MP FOR BROADMEADOWS