Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst some faces are new, some faces remain the same. I am pleased that I am following my colleague the member for Gorton in this debate once again. It has taken six days of the new parliament for the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the newly appointed shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, to ask her question and to make a move. One has to ask: why has this taken place today, and in what context? It comes within 24 hours of a report made available yesterday in the press by Professor David Peetz. I will come back to that report very soon. The member for Lalor stated in her debate that no-one is going to be distracted by the window-dressing and that we have the same old salesman. She is right in one regard. We may have different spokespeople on the other side, but their message has not changed. We still have the same old scare campaign taking place that was so evident throughout the debate last year.

We have seen the outgoing shadow minister, the member for Perth, moved to the side. He had a record of bringing into this place examples and cases which ended up being discredited. We saw that shadow minister removed for not making a hit and for bringing in discredited cases, but what has the new shadow minister, the member for Lalor, done on her very first day in this debate in the House? She has maintained the ALP record of bringing in discredited information and flawed research and only telling half of the story that should be told about what has taken place in employment growth throughout the term of this government and, in particular, since March last year. She mentioned that working families are struggling to keep their heads above water. She says that, as she goes around Australia, that is what they say to her. There is one thing that is certain: during the time that Labor was in power, working families were not just struggling to keep their heads above water; a lot of them were sinking. A lot of them lost their jobs, their investments, their family homes and their businesses. That is the reality of what took place under Labor, and what they said would take place under our Work Choices legislation has not come to pass.

The member for Lalor went on to recite employment figures from 1994 versus some from 2006. What she failed to mention was that in 1994 we had 7,800,000 people employed. What do we have today? We have over 10 million people in the workforce. The workforce has increased by around 2.9 million people during this time. Why do we have more people in work? Because businesses are growing, the economy is strong and the policies that this government has introduced over 10 years have encouraged businesses not only to keep their doors open but also to grow their businesses and have further employment take place. Certainly she can come in here and state some figures, but she should make sure to tell the full story.

There was a bit of employment growth in 1994, but we have to look at the context in which that was taking place. We had a recession. It was the ‘recession we had to have’. There were a lot of people out on the scrap heap. People who had not had an income to bring to the family table found jobs as we were moving out of the recession. Yet today we have jobs growth continuing in a period when there are high levels of employment and low levels of unemployment. From the 10.9 per cent or so unemployment that existed under Labor, we now have an unemployment rate of somewhere around 4½ per cent.

Let us put these arguments into context and make sure that we are comparing like with like rather than just looking at the simple statistics—coming out of the ‘recession we had to have’ versus the strong economic growth that we have today. Against that backdrop, this time last year—and even in the six months prior to this time last year—those on the other side were saying, ‘As soon as Work Choices comes in, there will be mass sackings.’ In fact, I think the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, was even saying that the divorce rate was going to go up at some stage because of what these laws were going to do to the country.

Work Choices has had a beneficial effect on the Australian economy. It has not been the doom and gloom that the members on the other side have maintained it would be. This government has been a good friend to Australian families, not simply through creating jobs and making sure people have a wage to take home to pay for their kids’ education and clothing and to put food on the table but also through other means to ensure that wages growth continues at high levels, that we have a friendly tax system—there have been tax reductions in the last seven or eight years that this government has been in power and there have been changes to the assistance provided to families to balance their work and family responsibilities. Contrast this to Labor’s 13 years in power, when families struggled and real wages decreased by 1.7 per cent. They decreased, I say to the member for Lalor and the member for Gorton. They did not increase; they decreased by 1.7 per cent. After 10 years of the Howard government, we have seen real wages increasing by 17.9 per cent.

The context of the recent claims, made by the industrial relations academic David Peetz of Griffith University, that wages for full-time adult workers fell by 1.1 per cent in the six months to August 2006 must also be presented in this parliament. It is important to remember that Peetz has based his research on a number of selective and shifting assumptions. One cannot be terribly surprised by this. If those on the other side present only half the information then obviously their ‘academic of choice’ is doing the same thing. Although currently there are 700,000 AWAs in operation, Peetz has based his research on a selection of 250 agreements. The selection he has used represents less than 0.05 per cent of agreements currently in operation.

It is interesting to note that as Peetz released his research a survey by the National Australia Bank was also released. What did their survey say compared to Peetz’s research? It paints quite a different picture. It shows that wages are certainly not dropping; rather, it highlights that wages are increasing at a rate of 5¼ per cent—a 5¼ per cent increase versus a decrease according to Labor’s academic of choice. The wage increase of 5¼ per cent is the highest growth rate since 1998. Added to that, the statement on monetary policy released today by the Reserve Bank of Australia outlined that the underlying annual rate of wage inflation remained at around four per cent.

These results are a stark contrast to Peetz’s assertion. I would certainly take the word of these respected authorities over that of someone who has made a name for himself producing half-baked information and suspect research paradigms. I have debated Peetz in public forums and, frankly, I do not know how a person who claims to be an academic can get away with that kind of research. Not only is he bringing his research into disrepute but also he is bringing the institution he represents into disrepute. The question must be asked: if this is the sort of research that is going to be allowed by the university and by the Labor Party then why should we believe anything that Peetz is going to come up with in the future?

The member for Lalor is trying to present herself as the new face of Labor’s industrial relations—that she will be kinder and friendlier than Work Choices. Using her words, the salesman has changed, but the message has not changed. We still have a scare campaign and we still have a labour movement, led by Greg Combet and others, which has basically said that it wants these laws to be ripped up. The Labor Party’s response is, of course, to say that they are going to throw all the good things that the coalition has done out the window. No matter how they couch those words and no matter how user-friendly and ‘walk both sides of the street’ they may be, the result will be that the economic growth we have seen will be jeopardised by those on the other side. (Time expired)

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