Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker; I meant to say the Leader of the Opposition. John Robertson, the leader of Unions NSW, gave us a hint on what it is that Mr Beazley is looking to do in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition of 10 and 11 June, in which he said:

The big-ticket item is to keep the ALP standing firm on abolishing Australian workplace agreements—something some of the mates in Canberra are agitating to water down. It’s unbelievable—finally we have an issue that connects with the labour heartland and these geniuses want to finesse the message. Just say no!

I think most people would have heard by now that employees on AWAs earn an average of 13 per cent more than those employees covered by certified agreements, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Leader of the Opposition’s plan to abolish AWAs flies in the face of the flexibility that we need in the labour market in the 21st century. The fact is that Western democracies with the lowest levels of unemployment—such as Australia, the UK and New Zealand—have deregulated their labour markets. Those places where there are highly regulated markets—such as France, Germany and Spain—also lead in high levels of unemployment.

Where I come from, the Northern Territory, it is pretty common knowledge that we have some fairly high wages. And it is no coincidence that, in the Northern Territory, there are some 13,366 workplace agreements already in place. In my electorate of Solomon alone there are 8,082 workplace agreements. There are 5,284 workplace agreements in the electorate of Lingiari. That is an extraordinarily high proportion of the working population—more so, I suppose, than in any other state or territory in Australia. As I say, it is no coincidence that wages in the Territory, on average, are higher. That is being driven, obviously, by AWAs.

AWAs allow employees to be more flexible with their employers. They deliver better benefits. But all this is being jeopardised by the Labor Party and the Leader of the Opposition. As I said yesterday, in speaking about the Aboriginal land rights act, some people in the Labor Party see it as in their interests to keep Aboriginal people subservient. I think the same attitude applies here where they want to keep the workers subservient. They want to have a Communist enclave in the workplace. They want workplaces to be highly regulated, and that is not the view of this government. (Time expired)

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