John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I can inform the honourable member for Canning that the progress so far under the new Work Choices legislation—and it is just over six months, so it is relatively early days—is a lot better than we were told by the Labor Party would be the case. Since Work Choices was introduced, over 117,000 AWAs have been signed. In September, over 27,000 AWAs were signed, which was a 46 per cent increase on the average uptake per month in 2005. Additionally, over 1,000 employee collective agreements have been signed since Work Choices began, covering over 48,000 employees, and there have been 800 union collective agreements signed, covering over 240,000 employees. But most important of all, despite the predictions that the world would come to an end, the sky would fall in, there would be mass sackings, wages would be slashed and generally there would be a pestilence all across the land, what has happened is that 175,000 new jobs have been created.

The member for Canning asked me for my response. I think I can say that is my response—but, more importantly and more interestingly, what is the response of state Labor governments to the policy of the opposition leader to tear up workplace agreements? I know that the Premier of the state from which the member for Canning comes, Western Australia, made it very clear when he was in China with me in June of this year that he was not the least bit interested in following the Beazley policy of tearing up Australian workplace agreements. He leads the largest mining state, if I can put it that way, in the country and he knows the critical importance of Australian workplace agreements to the mining industry of Western Australia. He knows they need those workplace agreements to get maximum choice and maximum productivity.

But this—how shall I put it?—recalcitrant trend amongst state Labor governments has now spread to Victoria. Yesterday, Mr Hulls, a senior minister in the Victorian government, was asked on seven occasions whether he supported the Beazley policy of tearing up AWAs, and he refused to do so. Listen to this for a disingenuous reply from a state Labor minister—a disingenuous reply. This is what he had to say. The Victorian industrial relations minister, on seven occasions, refused to endorse Mr Beazley’s policy, and he included in his refusal the following words: ‘Look, I haven’t got exactly the quotes that Kim Beazley said, so I don’t exactly know what he said.’ I do not think we are in any doubt. Mr Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, went to the ALP conference in June in New South Wales and he said, ‘I will tear up AWAs; I will tear up the government’s workplace agreements legislation.’ The truth is that Labor governments, faced with the need to cooperate with the business community of Australia, do not want a bar of the Beazley policy because they know that policy would be anathema to the future prosperity and development of this country.

See this speech in context