Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Another week and another ALP and union scare campaign on industrial relations—it just rolls on. The scaremongering campaign keeps claiming extreme industrial relations. The only thing that is consistently extreme in this entire debate is the language coming from members opposite and their union masters—language which we have heard all too often over the last 10 years—and claims that do not bear out the facts. In a very short while I will go to some of the claims by the previous speaker, the member for Gorton, in his much touted report WorkChoices: a race to the bottom. The exaggeration and the extremism just keeps going. This time Labor have put it in a nice binder, printed it off and put it in a coloured cover et cetera to give it some sort of respectability, but it still contains the same extreme, untruthful claims. The ALP believe that if they continue making these claims then they will magically come true. I hope the member for Gorton is not leaving the chamber. This is his MPI; he should be here to support it. But, obviously, he is so concerned he has decided to go away. We have seen this before.

It is time the ALP were honest with the Australian people. They should come clean with the Australian people. They should tell them how their opposition to Work Choices—in particular, their recent knee-jerk reaction of ripping up AWAs—will remove flexibility in the workplace. They should come clean and tell them how they will remove reward and incentive for the skills and effort that much needed labour has to offer to the community. They need to come clean and tell the Australian people how they would destroy the aspirations of people wanting to get on in their careers. They need to tell the Australian people how their knee-jerk reaction will cost jobs. That is what they need to be telling the Australian people, not the exaggerated claims we hear over and over again from members opposite.

The ALP are fond of quoting statistics on industrial relations, but rarely if ever are we given all the information. Those opposite, especially the member for Perth, are fond of referring to information provided at recent Senate estimates hearings detailing a sample of AWAs lodged since Work Choices came into effect. Let us look at some of that information. We are not told by the member for Perth or any of those opposite that, of those sampled, 78 per cent provide for wage increases. Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker, you heard me right—wage increases of 78 per cent during the life of the agreement. Furthermore, we are not told that 84 per cent of the sampled agreements contain higher wages than the comparable standard, the hourly rate in the award. We are not told that either because it is not convenient. Isn’t that surprising!

I have a couple of other statistics. In the Australian on Tuesday this week it was stated:

Workers following Kim Beazley’s advice to reject Australian Workplace Agreements lost $27 a week after a stationery company offering the contracts abandoned its plans for further change.

That is the message that members opposite should be spreading. That is a real factor in this debate. Follow the advice of the Leader of the Opposition and you will suffer. Nothing could be simpler. It is the centrepiece of Labor’s overnight knee-jerk reaction on workplace policy—and that is what it was: a knee-jerk reaction to pressure from New South Wales unions. Tearing up AWAs will mean that the workers that the ALP claims to support will suffer.

Let us not leave the criticism of this knee-jerk policy simply to claims that I or members on this side make. Let us look at what people out there in the community are saying. Let us look at an excellent opinion piece by Terry McCrann that appeared yesterday in the Courier Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sunit was in a number of newspapers. If those opposite have not read it, I suggest they do so. It appeared in the Courier Mail under the headline ‘Beazley a goose for threatening Australia’s golden egg—axing AWAs to hit resources’. I will read into the Hansard some of the comments that Mr McCrann, a very considered commentator on economic issues, made:

Let there be absolutely no mistake. If Labor won the next election and if it delivered on its promise to abolish AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements), it would seriously hurt every single current and future Australian. Any benefit delivered to individual workers—and even that is highly dubious—would be swamped, swamped, by the damage to the broader economy, along with the mass destruction of jobs—right across the broader economy.

It goes on to point out that the Mineral Councils has said:

... one out of every two employees in the minerals sector as a whole are covered by AWAs.

The bigger point is that all the rest of us benefit from the success of the resources industry, every which way.

That is Mr McCrann’s analysis of the knee-jerk reaction by the Leader of the Opposition, whose only job he is trying to protect is his own when faced with the pressure put on him by the unions in New South Wales. Furthermore, Mr McCrann writes:

The resources industry employs barely 100,000 people directly but it generates the prosperity on which the jobs of the other 10 million of us rest.

Mr McCrann is right. We do rely on the minerals sector. Those opposite are willing to tear down the same sector that is giving us our prosperity today. I find that a curious proposition, particularly when you see that the Leader of the Opposition comes from a state where that sector is actually thriving. The entire state’s fortune and prosperity have been based around that sector. No wonder he has moved house to Sydney. I wonder how often he gets back to Perth these days to front those people who at the moment are enjoying the benefits to the Western Australian economy created by the resources sector. The analysis of the ALP’s response continues, this time by Dennis Shanahan in the Australian on Tuesday.

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