Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

That was quite a rant from the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. I would like to add a question to the minister on top of those from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that he failed to answer. Minister, if you are so proud of these ads and you are so convinced that you are right, why don’t you front these ads yourself? Why don’t you have the courage not to hide behind a public servant and get out there and front these ads yourself? You are no more believable than you were in this chamber today. That is what you are worried about.

Over the course of the past few weeks we have again been bombarded by this government’s propaganda on the Work Choices legislation. Rather than recognise that they have got it wrong and gone too far with this legislation and rather than recognise that they have got the balance wrong, they are at it again—using taxpayers’ funds to try to convince people that it is not the government that got this legislation wrong. We could not possibly believe that this soft, cuddly, lovely government could be out there hurting workers. It is not the government that got it wrong; it is those nasty, bullying union bosses who have tricked the Australian public into believing that this legislation is wrong.

We see in this current Work Choices advertising how desperate this government has become, how desperate it is to turn the tide of opinion against the Work Choices legislation and just how willing it is to use taxpayer funds to do it. People across Australia have a right to be cynical about this government’s Work Choices message. They have a right to ask: ‘If this government is so proud of its Work Choices legislation—so convinced that it is the right thing to do—why aren’t they fronting the ad themselves and why aren’t they paying for the ad themselves?’ The Work Choices ads are a public relations campaign, not an information campaign. They are a public relations campaign for the Liberal Party, nothing else, and they should not be funded by taxpayers. Australian taxpayers did not ask for these laws. They should not have to bear the cost of advertising them.

The government has spent millions on advertising to sell these bad laws and its own research is showing that it is a complete waste of money. The reality is that no amount of government spin, no amount of money and no amount of PR can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. They are bad laws. They are hurting ordinary working Australians. They provide less protection for vulnerable workers, including young people, and they do exactly what the government intended them to do: drive wages down. No matter how many taxpayer dollars go into this campaign, the government will never convince Australian families that the laws are good for them, because they are not.

The current round of advertising has come particularly under the spotlight. First, there has been the controversial use of a senior public servant to front the ads. Not willing for the minister to be the front person for his own ads—the minister, perhaps, is concerned that people see him as too untrustworthy—the government is using a senior public servant to spruik its lines. Second, it has also been exposed this week that it is not the need to spread information about the new laws or a desire to ensure people know what their rights are under this legislation—limited as they are—but internal Liberal Party polling that has driven it to put these ads together. They are clearly party political ads based on party political polling. Today, we have seen a third issue raised with these ads. Accusations have been raised—and I note that at this stage they are just accusations—that one of the actors in the ad trying to convince parents that Work Choices does not make young people vulnerable to exploitation has been underpaying young workers. I understand that the government has rapidly pulled this ad from circulation, and so it should have. But what about the other ads? This pulled ad is frankly no more dishonest than the rest of them.

What I would like to see are the ads that never quite made it, the ones that were left on the cutting room floor. I would like to see the one where the government tries to reassure a worker in a business employing fewer than 100 people that he really cannot be sacked for operational reasons and that he still has rights to appeal against unfair dismissal. Where is that ad? Oh, that’s right: Work Choices does allow that so, oops, we had better not have that ad out there. Where is the ad that says that if you earn over $75,000 it is unlawful for your employer to deliver you an AWA that trades off significant entitlements for no compensation or compensation of only $1? Where is that ad? Again, the Work Choices legislation not only allows that but encourages that to happen. That is not an ad that the government wants to show.

The current debacle with these ads goes beyond the blatant waste of taxpayer funds. We now see that the government has hired somebody who is alleged to have underpaid a young worker. The government urgently needs to review this situation and determine whether it still believes that this person is an appropriate pin-up boy for its Work Choices legislation—although, when you think about it, perhaps he is exactly the perfect pin-up boy for this advertising campaign as he accused of engaging in exactly the sorts of activities this government was warned about when it first introduced the legislation.

This government has ceased to govern in the interests of working families. The Prime Minister has embarrassingly had to ask his cabinet: ‘Is it me?’ Prime Minister, it is you, but it is not just you; it is you and what you and your government have done to hardworking Australian families. These laws are a very large part of it. What do you expect hardworking Australian families to do? They trusted you with their livelihoods and trusted you not only to keep interest rates low but to protect them in their workplaces. Did you expect Australian families to praise you, Prime Minister, as you stripped them of their entitlements and conditions? Did you expect them to thank you when you took away their bargaining power and what limited protection they had? Did you really expect that they would cheer when you took away any remaining fairness and balance left in the industrial relations system? Why is the Prime Minister so surprised that people are unhappy with the Work Choices legislation?

The government did not need to commission Mark Textor to tell it that it is out of touch with Australian families. All it has to do is walk down the street of any suburb or town in this country and Australian families will tell it that. They will tell the government that they are worried about the impact of rising health costs on their ability to ensure their kids are getting access to the best health services, with GP costs doubling under this government; worried about what the rising costs of education means for the future of their kids; and worried about their children being placed in a vulnerable position as they enter the workforce for the first time.

Families are now struggling with record household debt. Australian household debt is now over $1 trillion. Australian households are now spending a record 9.3 per cent of their disposable income simply paying off the interest on their mortgage. Basics such as grocery bills have increased by around nine per cent over the past two years and are impacting on family budgets. And this government’s sole great economic reform this term—designed to boost the economy and make life better for working families—has been Work Choices, and when it failed to convince people they will be better off under the Work Choices legislation it did not do anything to fix it but, instead, went on a massive taxpayer funded marketing campaign. Work Choices, we understand, has in total cost $75 million so far, when we take into account the costs allocated to the Office of Workplace Services and the Office of the Employment Advocate, which has now changed. The initial round of week-long advertising after the introduction of the so-called fairness test cost around $25,000 an hour. On top of this, there has been advertising for private health insurance costing $27 million, advertising for superannuation costing $69 million and advertising for regional telecommunications costing $6 million—and the list goes on.

While the Howard government spends like a drunken sailor on advertising, Australian families have a right to question what else this money could have been spent on. In my own district there is the $90 million required to secure our water supply, which would avoid $180 extra per year on the water rates for Ballarat families. Families struggling to cope with record healthcare costs would have appreciated the relief. I am sure that those families who have their overtime and penalty rates cut will be asking why the government is telling them that they have to make a financial sacrifice for the good of the economy when the government is now the nation’s second biggest advertiser, outspending Harvey Norman, Woolworths and Nestle. I am sure families struggling to find the HECS fees for their kids this semester would appreciate increased government funding for university students. Investment in tertiary education has declined by around seven per cent under the Howard government, while student debt has tripled since 1996 to $13 billion. Is the Howard government really surprised that people think it is out of touch when it continues to spend millions of dollars of ordinary working families’ money on political advertising?

Simply put, the government’s Work Choices legislation is bad law. It does not provide protection to Australian workers; it removes protection. And now this government is wasting hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars in political advertising rather than reintroducing fairness into the workplace. The reality is that hardworking Australian families know that these laws are bad—they know that their penalty rates and take-home pay have been cut, and no amount of government spin will cover up the fact that the Howard government has got it wrong on workplace laws. Work Choices is bad for Australia, it is bad for the economy—but, more importantly, it is bad for working families in this country.

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