Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

May I say that the member for Lilley is a very low-productivity unit of production. The Leader of the Opposition said: ‘If employers and employees are working together as units of production—as firms—that is how in fact you best yield the best productive outcome.’ That is what decentralised wage fixation is all about. If you make sure that, at the level of the local workplace, employer and employee are working together as human beings on terms and conditions that are suitable to that workplace, you get the best outcome.

But centralised wage fixation says that we should take a particular trade and say in relation to that—either through an award or through pattern bargaining—that that trade, whether it is done by a person on the Pilbara, whether it is done on a coalfield in Queensland or whether it is done in a Moorabbin shop, should be paid according to centralised principles. That is why every economic think tank that has thought about this says, ‘Get it down to the workplace, get it down to employer to employee, make it relevant to that place and get the best outcomes.’ That is why labour market productivity is enhanced by decentralised wage fixation. The rollback proposed by the Labor Party is completely in the wrong direction for a modern economy.

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