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

The Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues can interrupt, can point to the gallery and can quote from pamphlets and the views of individuals, but nothing can gainsay the facts. The fact is that the unemployed are better off under this government than they have been for 30 years. The fact is that last week we had an unemployment rate that was at a record 30-year low. The fact is that real wages have risen under this government by 16.8 per cent. The real fact is that over the last 10 years we have created 1.8 million new jobs in this economy. The Leader of the Opposition started his question to me by saying he did not want anything to do with France and Germany. If he does not want anything to do with France or Germany he should not embrace the policies that have delivered a 30 per cent youth unemployment rate in France and that have also left the German economy with an unemployment rate of around 10 or 11 per cent. The undeniable fact is that those economies that deregulate their labour markets generate greater productivity and reduce unemployment. Those economies and those countries that continue to regulate, to suffocate and to stultify their labour markets produce higher levels of unemployment and lower levels of economic growth.

That is why a courageously successful Labour leader, like Tony Blair, when he became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1997, had the courage to face the trade union movement of that country and say that their old ways had to change, that they had to accept the labour market reforms of the Thatcher era and they had to accept that the days of sandwiches and beer at No. 10 to solve industrial disputes were forever behind them. What a contrast: the courage of Tony Blair addressing the TUC in May 1997, acquainting them with the realities of the modern world, and the Leader of the Opposition meekly rolling over in the Sydney Town Hall last Sunday. The contrast could not have been starker with a leader prepared if necessary to disagree with those in his own ranks in the national interest. Successful Labor leaders—indeed, successful leaders on occasions—have to disagree with those in their own ranks if they know that in so doing they are matching the national interest.

The man who sits opposite me, and would be the Prime Minister of this country, has failed the national interest. He has allowed himself to be bullied by the union bosses of Australia and he has disqualified himself not only in the eyes of people who traditionally vote Liberal but, I reckon, in the eyes of many of these miners in Western Australia, who probably come from lifelong Labor Party backgrounds. Person after person in the mining industry of this country, brought up in the labour movement, is turning their back on the labour movement because the labour movement no longer represents the hopes and the dreams of aspirational Australia.

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