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

a $27.36 increase in wages not just for those on the federal minimum wage but also for those earning up to $700 a week. In other words, about one million of the lowest paid award-reliant Australians are getting a $27.36 increase in their wages as a result of the Fair Pay Commission, and for about another 250,000 Australians who are award-reliant and earning more than $700 a week—remembering that these days most people are not award-reliant; they are on agreements because they are better off—there was a $22 increase in their wages as well. Is this the driving down, the slashing or the green light for wages going backwards in Australia? Hardly. Once again, wages have been going up. So the second charge, the second core criticism that is made of Work Choices, namely that it would drive down wages for Australians, has also been proven wrong.

Let us go to the third criticism that has been made over the past few months about the Work Choices legislation: that it would lead to heightened industrial disputation in Australia. Again, let me quote, so that nobody thinks I am making this up or putting words into the mouths of those opposite in the Labor movement. The Leader of the Opposition told the ALP state conference in Tasmania:

These extreme changes risk dragging us back into an era of heightened industrial conflict.

Or Senator George Campbell, on AAP:

... the sort of relationship that’s now been established in the workplace is going to encourage that sabotage to take place ...

Let us look again at empirical data produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in relation to what has happened to industrial disputation, strikes and the like in Australia. The June quarter of 2006 revealed that there were just 3.1 working days lost per 1,000 employees, which is the lowest quarterly rate of disputes ever recorded in this country by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Let me put this in context. If you go back to when the Leader of the Opposition was the minister for employment in Australia in the early nineties—although some of us think he was the minister for unemployment at that time—there were 104.6 working days lost per 1,000 in December 1992. We are comparing 104 working days lost per 1,000 employees with just 3.1 working days lost per 1,000 employees in the latest data from the ABS. And yet the claim was made that this would lead to greater industrial disputation and a dog-eat-dog environment in Australia. The opposite has occurred as a result of the workplace changes that we have put in place, not just recently but going back to 1996 as well. So on the third criticism, that there would be greater industrial disputation—not on my say so or on my colleagues’ say so but on the data produced officially for us, as it is year after year, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—the data shows that, once again, the criticisms made by the Leader of the Opposition and those around him have simply been wrong.

The Leader of the Opposition has also criticised Work Choices on productivity growth. He said to the National Press Club on 1 February this year: ‘There is no productivity agenda here.’ He said on PM, on ABC Radio: ‘This will hurt the economy.’ Let us again look at the data. Don’t believe me; look at the ABS data that has been produced. Figures released yesterday show that labour productivity grew by 2.2 per cent this financial year. So labour productivity is growing in this financial year under these changes that have been put in place. And there is other data beyond that. When you strip away all the frenzied rhetoric that comes from the Leader of the Opposition and go to the core criticisms of Work Choices, the reality is that they have been proved wrong.

Take retrenchments, for example. The latest data on retrenchments shows that the number of retrenchments is 58 per cent lower compared with when the Leader of the Opposition was the minister for employment in the Hawke-Keating-Beazley Labor government back in the early 1990s. So, whether we are talking about jobs growth, wages growth, industrial disputation, productivity growth, retrenchments in the economy or the unemployment rate—six critical measures of the Australian economy—on each of these measures the claims that were made by the opposition in relation to these matters have been proved to be absolutely wrong. Yet we had the Leader of the Opposition come in here today and say that this is an assault on Middle Australia. This could only come from somebody who said in the early 1990s that he had given up on the unemployed in this country. He said words to the effect that the employment portfolio, which he then had, was the one that he had the least interest in of all the portfolios that he had had.

One thing that you never hear about from the opposition is job creation. You never hear about how we grow the economy in this country. It is economic growth that creates jobs in this country. It is the ability of people to get out and have a go, which is what this is all about. People want to be able to get out, have a go and be rewarded for having a go. Yet what the Labor Party would do with their radical re-regulation of the workforce in Australia would take away those incentives from ordinary Australians.

Ordinary Australians know, on the basis of their experience, what has happened as a result of this government’s policy. There is a great disconnect between what the Leader of the Opposition rants on about in this place each day and what ordinary Australians know. We will continue to make the changes necessary to make the reforms, because they are about the future of this country. We are about the future of this country. We are about the national interest. Regrettably, the Labor Party is still about the vested interests of its union bosses.

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