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

when the Leader of the Opposition was a senior cabinet minister in the previous government, as was the gentleman who is interjecting at the present time. Australians can remember home loan interest rates of 17 per cent, and small business in Australia can remember paying interest rates of 21 and 22 per cent. That is the reality in terms of the outcome. We can hear all the rhetoric we like from the opposition. The reality is that, on average, when you compare 13 years of the Labor government with 10 years of this government, there is a five per cent difference in relation to those interest rates.

Here we are. At this stage I think we are some 137 days, as I calculate it, since Work Choices was introduced and came into operation in Australia. What we were told by the Labor Party before the introduction of Work Choices was that this would be a green light for mass sackings in Australia. We were told by the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Perth and others that this was going to lead to a whole series of disastrous consequences for Australians. One of the leading union figures in Australia said, ‘This is a green light for mass sackings.’ Well, 137 days after Work Choices came into operation, what have we seen? We have not seen mass sackings. What we have seen is the creation of an additional 100,000 jobs in Australia—an additional 100,000 jobs created since 27 March, not the mass sackings that were predicted by the Leader of the Opposition and others.

We heard the member for Perth talking earlier about values and virtues. What, I ask, is so virtuous about having 700,000 Australian kids growing up in homes where no-one has a job? What is so virtuous about a system that still condemns some five per cent of the workforce to unemployment in this country? Yet since Work Choices came in we have seen another slight fall in the unemployment rate. For the first time in 30 years we have an unemployment rate in Australia beginning with the figure 4. That is what we are on about—trying to create the best conditions, the conditions that are most optimal, so that more Australians can be in employment rather than fewer Australians.

I remember reading in Don Watson’s biography, if I can call it that, of Paul Keating in the Keating era that the member for Perth, who was then an adviser to the former Prime Minister, Mr Keating, used to tell Mr Keating before he went anywhere, before he got out of the car to go to his latest speaking engagement, to talk about jobs and recovery: ‘Jobs and recovery, mate. Just talk about jobs and recovery.’ I remind the member for Perth that this is about jobs. It is about creating jobs for Australians so that more Australians than would otherwise be in a job have the opportunity of getting a job. Why should we accept a 4.9, five or 5½ per cent—or whatever it might be—unemployment rate in Australia? Why shouldn’t we be trying to create the conditions in which there is a better opportunity, the most optimal conditions, for more Australians to get jobs than otherwise?

Yet what we have from the opposition is a proposition that would simply rip all this up, not just to take us back to before Work Choices but to rip up what has been in operation for the last 10 years under the Workplace Relations Act and take us back to the 1980s so far as industrial relations is concerned in Australia. What did the 1980s give us? A prescriptive system of industrial relations. What did that prescriptive system of industrial relations do for the million people thrown out of employment as a result of the recession we had to have at the end of the 1980s? A prescriptive system of industrial relations did not save any one of those jobs. To his credit, Mr Keating at least realised that there had to be some changes away from the one-size-fits-all award approach that had been in operation in the 1980s and prior to that in Australia.

Yet the Leader of the Opposition we have now wants to ignore that progress made over the last 10 or 15 years, ignore the prosperity which reforms that have been made by this government have contributed to and take us all back to the past in terms of economic management and economic credibility, in terms of who can be best trusted to run this country. I say to Australians: a man who is going to rip up these sorts of reforms, who is not going to meet the challenges of the future, is not someone who should be trusted to be in charge of the country and the economy, to take us forward into the future.

What the Leader of the Opposition proposes to do comes at the bidding of the union movement in Australia, who simply want to look after their vested interests and not after the workers. Look at the proportion and the density of the workforce that actually belongs to a union in Australia today. It has fallen to less than 17 per cent and it has been in free-fall for the last decade or two. Why? Because the one-size-fits-all being told from above approach by shop stewards is not the way in which the workforce in Australia wants to operate. It wants flexibility in its operation, in the way in which people are employed, so that they can meet their various desires and aspirations, including the desire and aspiration to work.

This government stands by this legislation. It is important legislation. It is legislation that will take us forward. It is legislation that meets the challenges of the future, and we are not going to be turning back or ripping up the legislation, as the Leader of the Opposition would have us do—and he will tell us more about it, no doubt, when he gets on his feet in a moment. We are going to move forward, because only by moving forward, by meeting the challenges of the future and by engaging in continuing reform, which is what governments are put in place to do—only by doing that—will we be in a position better than any other position to meet the continued prosperity that Australians want. That is why we are committed to this legislation. That is why, amongst other reasons, this motion should be defeated.

See this speech in context