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

I thank the member for Boothby for his question. As the Treasurer indicated earlier this afternoon, the ABS labour price index data shows that Australian workers continue to experience strong wages growth, something which the Labor Party and the unions said would come to an end with Work Choices. Indeed, managing the economy and making the necessary reforms to the economy, including the introduction of the Work Choices legislation, is part of the reason why we continue to have not only low unemployment in Australia but, in addition to that, jobs growth and wages growth, as this data indicates.

The member for Boothby asked me about any alternative policies. I note that something like nine months after the Leader of the Opposition promised to bring forward his blueprint for workplace relations in Australia and to release it in the first half of this year we are still waiting. The reality is that the Leader of the Opposition will not bring forward a blueprint to roll back reform until he gets the tick-off by the union movement in Australia.

I was interested to note that the Australian Labor Party is advertising its Federal Labor Business Forum for 2006. This is a very interesting document and these will be a couple of interesting days in Sydney. Business has been invited to contribute $5,000 a head to come along and learn about the alternative policies of the Australian Labor Party. I looked through this document—I looked again and again—and I could not find any reference whatsoever to industrial relations. Indeed, I looked through the document at the speakers on the list and I saw such Labor luminaries as Senator Kerry O’Brien, Senator Nick Sherry and the member for Grayndler but not the member for Perth, the spokesman on industrial relations. He does not feature on the program whatsoever.

So the Labor Party are going to have this two-day talkfest in which business is invited to come along and contribute $5,000 per head to the Labor Party coffers, and yet there will be an elephant in the room which goes unmentioned—the elephant in the room in this case being their industrial relations policy, of which they will utter not a word at the present time. If they were proud of this policy and they thought they had support for it, why wouldn’t they go out to the business community in Australia and say, ‘We’re going to rip up AWAs and this is why we’re going to do it. We’re going to roll back unfair dismissal laws, so that businesses in Australia will be fearful about employing people.’ No, they have no courage to come forward.

See this speech in context