Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I look at the MPI today and I see it is about pressure facing working families. I suppose we are finally getting an acknowledgement from the other side that there are people out there working. It certainly was different some time ago when the Labor Party were in office in Australia, when we had a million unemployed people on the dole queues. That situation has turned around in a big way thanks to the policies of the Howard government. We have a situation now in Australia where we have record low unemployment and record wages growth. As the member for Deakin said, wages have grown by 18 per cent in real terms under this government, whereas after 13 years of Labor government wages grew by something around one per cent. We also have the lowest rate of strikes since records have been kept. That shows that there are working families out there.

A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting visit to my electorate. Sharan Burrow of the ACTU decided that she was going to turn up there and campaign heavily against the Work Choices legislation. Ms Burrow turned up at the front of my office with half a dozen or a dozen or so protestors, screaming abuse at my window. I thought I should go out and see what her concerns were, so I went and asked Ms Burrow what her problems were. She said she did not like this Work Choices legislation. She said it was terrible. At the time, it was only the day after unemployment figures were announced in the Northern Territory. We had the Northern Territory Labor Treasurer trumpeting the fact that unemployment had fallen to two per cent in the Northern Territory. It had fallen to two per cent from 6.4 per cent in February the previous year, immediately prior to the introduction of Work Choices. I said to Ms Burrow that the reason we had had such a great drop in unemployment in the Northern Territory was that business was embracing Work Choices and was employing more people as a result.

Only on Tuesday, the Sensis small business index released their report, and what they said about the Northern Territory was that it was a little bit different from the rest of the country. They said:

Support among SMEs—

that is, small to medium enterprises—

for the Federal Government recorded a further marginal rise during the quarter and has now been net positive for nine out of the last 10 quarters, with the Federal Government being the most supported government in Australia by SMEs.

…     …         …

The strongest support for the Federal Government’s policies occurred in the Northern Territory, where businesses recorded a positive 23 per cent net balance.

They go on to say:

Once again, the Federal Government’s industrial relations policies were by far the main reason SMEs gave for believing the Federal Government was trying to support small business.

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