Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Indi for her question, because we have been hearing these false and hysterical claims from those opposite and from the union movement about how Work Choices is cutting wages for Australian workers. So I was very interested to read a report this morning in the West Australian newspaper which says that the John Holland construction group will be offering employment contracts to 180 individual workers on a building site in Port Hedland using a new provision in the work choices legislation. Indeed, John Holland’s Port Hedland agreement delivers pay rates which, according to the report, are among the highest in the booming north-west ‘with unskilled labourers to collect $2,700, including allowances, for a 60-hour week’. That is, $2,700 for unskilled labourers under this agreement. That would not have been possible prior to Monday, because it is as a result of the work choices legislation. Indeed, in another report about this, a spokesman for John Holland in the Australian Financial Review is quoting as saying:

It’s quite intentionally not trying to undermine—

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