Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

She’s something else, isn’t she! I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. It was a good question I thought. I note that, since the introduction of Work Choices a year ago, the number of average hours Australians are working has come down by half an hour overall per week. I also recognise that wages have gone up by 1.5 per cent in real terms. I also note that 263,000 new jobs have been created. Nearly 90 per cent of those are full-time jobs and over 109,000 of those are for women, which is a great story. I also note that the level of industrial disputation is at its lowest point since records were first kept in 1913.

One of the great stories about the introduction of the laws a year ago is that it has encouraged employers who previously employed people as casuals to bring them onto AWAs and to give them some permanency in their workplace. The reason why they have been able to do that is that the AWA is a flexible instrument.

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