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

Oh, yes, he did. He certainly did. First of all, you had Alan Carpenter, the Premier of Western Australia, who knows full well that if you rip up AWAs you throw a dagger at the heart of the resource industry in his state, you had Mr Hulls in Victoria being asked seven times to support the Leader of the Opposition’s policy and he did not, and yesterday in the estimates committee the South Australian Premier was given ample opportunity to back the policy of the Leader of the Opposition of ripping up AWAs. He used 300 words in answering a simple question, but he failed to affirm in those 300 words that he supported the Leader of the Opposition’s policy of ripping up AWAs. There is a particular South Australian reason for that, and that is that a very significant number, perhaps the majority, of the people employed at the Roxbury Downs mine are employed under individual contracts. That is the reason. I find that Premier a little errant on other issues—I do not want anybody to be under any misapprehension; he is errant on many of the issues that are important to Australia—but when it comes to the resource development of his own state, he knows darn well, as does Alan Carpenter, that ripping up AWAs would do enormous damage to the resource sector. In fact, the Australian Mines and Metals Association has found that abolishing AWAs will cost the mining industry $6 billion. We are dealing here with the one industry that, according to the opposition, is in fact responsible for the current wealth of Australia.

In conclusion, and in reply to the member for Wakefield, alternative policies would greatly damage the economy of Australia, would increase unemployment, would reduce real wages growth and, overall, would be bad news for the workers of this country.

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