Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill 2007. It enhances and strengthens the safety net for Australian workers. The central feature of this legislation is the fairness test, which guarantees that when workers enter into a workplace agreement it will be a fair one. It will guarantee that any protective conditions traded off will have been fully and fairly compensated, as they usually are, in higher wages. This will be examined by and will need to be approved by an independent statutory authority, the Workplace Authority. Further, the Workplace Authority will ensure compensation in any case where an AWA is not deemed to be fair and will require changes to agreements to ensure that they are. The work of the Workplace Authority will be backed up by the Workplace Ombudsman—if you like, a workers’ watchdog—also appointed by the Governor-General. This is in contrast with Labor’s proposed Fair Work Australia, which would be manned by the unions, run by the unions and operated for the unions.

This legislation will ensure the best of both worlds. Firstly, it will ensure strong protection for workers to ensure a fair deal, to ensure that they are no worse off under any agreement; and, secondly, it will ensure a continuation of the flexibility of Australian workplace agreements, which have delivered productivity increases and pay rises and which have allowed workers and employers to negotiate mutually agreeable arrangements that suit their own family needs, study needs et cetera.

It is worth pointing out—and these are not my statistics but the statistics of the Australian Bureau of Statistics—that people on AWAs are earning, on average, nine per cent more than people on collective agreements, and a massive 94 per cent more than people on awards. This legislation provides protection but still allows the flexibility that has increased productivity, will continue to increase productivity and will ensure those ongoing pay rises.

It is also worth pointing out the record and comparing it with the claims and the scaremongering that we heard from the Labor Party and the union movement 18 months ago when this legislation was introduced. First of all, they said that, by ending the unfair dismissal laws, we would see mass dismissals, that there would be rising unemployment and that workers would be put off just at the whim of employers. The member for Rankin might not agree, but that was clearly the message from the opposition and from the trade union movement.

What have been the results in the past 15 months? The results are an absolute denial of the claims that we heard from those opposite. Since March last year, 326,000 new jobs have been created. Ninety per cent of those are full-time jobs, thus ending the casualisation of the workforce that had been going on for some time. Unemployment is down to its lowest level in 33 years, down to 4.4 per cent, building on the improvements that we have already seen over the past 10 years following the first round of workplace relations changes introduced by this government in 1997—changes that have reduced unemployment, dramatically reduced youth unemployment and lowered the ranks of the long-term unemployed. So much for the scare campaign from those opposite that we would see rising unemployment. We have welcome low levels of unemployment not seen for at least 33 years in this country.

The second nonsense we heard from the other side was that wages would be driven down; that, supposedly, the aim of this legislation was to drive down wages. What has happened? Again, the very opposite. In the last year, wages have risen by 4.1 per cent on average and real wages are up by 1.5 per cent. Compare the record of the Howard government with the record of the Labor Party that is supposed to be the workers’ friend. In the last 11 years under the Howard government, we have had real average wages rise by 19.8 per cent. What did we have under Labor? We actually had a fall in real wages in the 13 years of Labor—and Labor proudly boasted that they would drive down wages. It could not be a clearer contrast: Labor drove wages down; this government has lifted wages in real terms by 19.8 per cent, faster than inflation.

The other aspect of the scaremongering we heard was that the Fair Pay Commission would somehow erode the wages of workers. What was the first decision by the Fair Pay Commission late last year? A rise in the minimum wage of $27 a week, a rise that stunned even the Labor Party and the ACTU because of its magnitude.

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