John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I might best answer that question from the member for Hasluck by asking him to come along at half past seven tonight to hear the Treasurer, who has been the principal architect within the government of our great economic prosperity, outline the plan on behalf of the government. But without in any way pre-empting my colleague, let me say that the sorts of policies that have brought us to a situation where we are now enjoying the longest unbroken economic expansion in Australia’s history are not things that have come by happenstance. There is a line being run by the opposition that the economy is something out there and it does not matter who runs it, it will keep going well—as if the economy were on autopilot. The truth is that the strong economy we now have is the result of decisions taken by this government over the last 11 years—difficult decisions, all of which, incidentally, have been opposed by the Australian Labor Party. The Australian Labor Party opposed us getting the budget into surplus, they opposed us paying off $96 billion of government debt, they opposed the first round of industrial relations reform, they opposed waterfront reform, they opposed taxation reform, they opposed the second round of industrial relations reform and they opposed the sale of Telstra—although they are now happy to use that as a launching pad for their own attempts to raid the Future Fund in the name of providing this country with broadband when, in reality, it is not the business of taxpayers to fund broadband; it should be a product of the proper operation of the market circumstances of our economy.

The member for Hasluck asked me if I am aware of any alternative policy. One alternative policy I am aware of—I think I am aware of it, because it keeps changing—is the industrial relations policy of the Leader of the Opposition. Isn’t it interesting? We now have a situation where the real extremists on industrial relations are the members of the Australian Labor Party. They are the people that would hand industrial relations in this country over to the union bosses. You can be certain of these things about Labor’s industrial relations policy: firstly, they will put union power ahead of workers’ jobs; secondly, they will bring back the job-destroying unfair dismissal laws; and, thirdly, they will hand over to an industrial relations system dominated by collective bargaining—a return of union power at a time when trade unions in this country are peopled by only 15 per cent of the private sector workforce. Only 15 per cent of the private sector workforce of this country now choose to belong to a trade union, yet the Labor Party want to give union power and union bosses 100 per cent control of our industrial relations system. Maybe that has got something to do with the fact that 60 to 70 per cent of the Labor Party frontbench are former union officials.

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