John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

My guarantee is my record, and I am very proud of my record. I will tell you what: that record gets better and better. During the election campaign I could only talk of real wage increases of 14 per cent. Here we are, almost halfway through the current term, and the real wage increase has gone to 16.8 per cent. Amazingly, it has gone from about 13 per cent in the last 18 months to 16.8 per cent. Yet the Leader of the Opposition runs around saying that I am trying to cut wages. Apart from it being an exercise in stupidity and unfairness to try to cut wages, it flies in the face of the government’s performance.

Let me say this to the Leader of the Opposition: as the years go by and you look back on the inanity of your attack on these changes, you will be comforted by the fact that that inanity was matched by the absurdity of the allegations you made in 1996 that our changes were about cutting wages. In 1996 the Labor Party ran around the country saying that the Reith reforms were about cutting wages. Here we are, 10 years later—you are still over there and wages are up by 16.8 per cent.

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