Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

So you think that is all right? In the last year, 21,000 jobs have been lost in the Fairfield-Liverpool area, which includes my electorate of Fowler. The worry for those with jobs in Fowler is that the Prime Minister is serious about solving the unemployment problem by reducing the wages and conditions of already low-paid workers. You can imagine how much more power employers will have when it comes to offering AWAs at lower pay and with little or no protection for long-accepted award conditions.

When this trend spreads to electorates like Greenway, Lindsay and Macarthur, the members for those electorates might not be so enthusiastic in their support for the government’s extreme—and they are extreme—industrial relations changes. In the months ahead, as thousands more workers have an AWA pushed across the desk with a pen to sign, they will realise that the only choices that apply in the government’s Work Choices laws are employers’ choices. There is no room for negotiation in the one-size-fits-all workplace agreement. As they see their income and working conditions erode in the months after they have signed their AWA, they will fully realise what they have lost.

Australian workplace agreements are nothing more than a tool for employers to cut labour costs. As we saw from the advice from Freehills, once one employer—one Spotlight—makes the move, all other employers will be forced to follow, and it will become a race to the bottom. Only Kim Beazley’s pledge to tear up workplace agreements can put a stop to that insanity. (Time expired)

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