Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. The key thing when it comes to industrial relations is whether you have in place an industrial relations system which rewards productivity. The hallmark of the industrial relations reforms that we are introducing as a government is that they drive productivity. Whether it is the elements which are contained within the proposed modernisation of awards, whether it is the elements contained within the future of enterprise bargaining, whether it is the elements contained in the future arrangements which will govern common-law agreements, productivity must be at its centre and its core. For those reasons, we believe that this is the right way forward to build long-term productivity growth.

If you are concerned with the war against inflation, you must not only have an effective strategy to build productivity through your workplace relations system but also do so across the instruments of government policy. You must make sure that you have got a decent supply of labour, a decent supply of skilled labour and a decent supply of trained labour. These are areas of gross and continuing neglect on the part of those who had 12 years to act in this area and failed to do so. Another driver of long-term productivity growth and fighting the fight against inflation is to ensure that your capacity constraints in infrastructure are being dealt with. Once again, we find that those opposite—

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