Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Maranoa for his question. The first and obvious answer to the question is that small business people throughout regional Australia are delighted with the changes that we have made under our workplace policy reforms in terms of getting rid of the unfair dismissal laws that were introduced by the former Labor government in this country that were an absolute handbrake on employment opportunities for young people across regional Australia. I suspect that a lot of the 263,000 jobs that have been created in the economy over the last 12 months since Work Choices was introduced have come from the small business sector and small business in regional Australia.

It goes without saying that the policies we have put in place over a number of years, the reforms we have made to the Australian economy in terms of making it more competitive and more efficient, have encouraged greater employment opportunities across the country, particularly in regional Australia. As the Prime Minister just indicated a while ago, we are experiencing the lowest level of unemployment in Australia in 30 years: 4.6 per cent unemployment in the Australian economy; real wages have grown by 17.9 per cent; and the lowest level of industrial disputes on record at a time when there is a coalition government in power in Canberra. The most graphic of all examples is the creation of new jobs in the economy since Work Choices began 12 months ago—263,000 new jobs—and a lot of them have been generated in small business where we got rid of the burden of those unfair dismissal laws that were introduced by Laurie Brereton in the former Labor government.

The member for Maranoa asked about regional Australia. In regional Australia job growth has continued in spite of the drought: 63 per cent of regional areas recorded a drop in unemployment in the past 12 months notwithstanding the effects of drought; 63 per cent increased employment in regional Australia; and 64 per cent of regional areas have an unemployment rate of less than five per cent compared to 16 per cent under the former Labor government. That is what is happening in regional Australia because there is more flexibility in the way people want to engage in the workplace, so there are more jobs in regional Australia and that means more security for working families in regional Australia.

The Labor Party and the union movement are running a scare campaign on Work Choices and they are also running it around regional Australia. We have seen the orange signs up everywhere, and they are running it hard. The union movement is spending a fortune of their members’ money to try and save their own necks, and many would comment that it is working.

I will give a couple of examples of what regional Australians are saying about the policies in Work Choices. I have only to remind those opposite of the result in the seat of Murray-Darling—the old bastion of the Labor Party and the union movement in Broken Hill. For the first time in history at a state level, Murray-Darling is now represented by a member of the coalition and not a member of the Labor Party. John Williams, the Nationals candidate, has done a fantastic job in Broken Hill. He is from Broken Hill. He lives in Broken Hill.

But there is more. If you go back, the same campaign was run in the Queensland election last year, and we won the seat of Bundaberg for the first time in a hundred years. In Victoria last year, when the same campaign was run, for the first time we won the seat of Morwell in the Latrobe Valley from the Labor Party. The Labor Party can make all the claims they like, but people in regional Australia know who is best placed to deliver strong economic growth and create job opportunities in regional Australia.

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