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

We hear a lot about fairness from the Leader of the Opposition. What the Leader of the Opposition will not face is that basic fairness starts with the chance of a job. This is the man who presided over double-digit unemployment in Australia, left this country with a $10 billion black hole and a $96 billion Commonwealth debt and whose economic responsibility can be summed up in those three pieces of data alone. Through his comments today he says implicitly to the people of Australia that five per cent unemployment is good enough. That is what the Leader of the Opposition is effectively saying to the people of Australia today. We do not believe that, because five per cent unemployment means that, today, there are still hundreds of thousands of our fellow Australians who do not have a job, and we believe that, as far as those Australians are concerned, basic fairness is the opportunity to get a job.

For somebody who is young and does not have a job, to be able to get a job that contains minimum standards and conditions—a job that contains as part of the guarantee under the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard a 38-hour week and the classification wages that are set in the award classifications, which are adjusted up by the Australian Fair Pay Commission in the future, a job that contains a guarantee of four weeks annual leave, in addition to sick leave, personal leave and carers leave—

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