Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, in an act of breathtaking arrogance, in an interview on Sky News on 19 March, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion gave her personal guarantee that no worker would be worse off due to Labor’s roll-back of workplace relations laws. We now know that the government has advice from Treasury—that is, from the government’s own economic advisers—that potentially thousands of workers will be worse off because they will lose their jobs under Labor’s roll-back of workplace relations reforms. While the minister clearly does not think this is a matter of public importance—she is not even in the House to answer it—and the minister clearly does not believe that losing your job makes you worse off, every member of the coalition can assure the minister, on behalf of their constituents, that losing your job has a devastating impact on people and their families because job security underpins personal security and underpins family security.

The most concerning aspect of the minister’s arrogant but worthless guarantee is that the government has plenty of advice that its roll-back of workplace relations laws will drive up inflation and will destroy jobs. This is in spite of the Prime Minister’s statement on 30 April when he committed the government to evidence based policy—evidence based, not ideology. He said in a speech to public servants:

A third element of the Government’s agenda for the public service is to ensure a robust, evidence-based policy making process. Policy design and policy evaluation should be driven by analysis of all the available options, and not by ideology.

…         …         …

Policy innovation and evidence-based policy making is at the heart of being a reformist government.

Again, it was a hollow, shallow, worthless statement because the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion, who is not at the table and not even in the House, continues with the pretence that no such Treasury advice exists and that there is no modelling and no econometric analysis within government that reveals the impact on inflation and on jobs of Labor’s roll-back of workplace relations reforms.

It is remarkable that the minister has said consistently that the Labor government has done no modelling, no research and no analysis of the impact of its workplace relations policies. That is as remarkable a statement as one could think of. It is a defence of the indefensible. What is the minister relying on for her policies? The Prime Minister said it had to be evidence based, but the minister says there is no modelling, no evidence, no analysis and no research of the impact of Labor’s policies to roll back workplace relations reforms. So what is the minister relying on—divine intuition? As a matter of fact, the minister claimed on ABC radio that she did not need modelling or research; she did not need the assistance of experts. In an interview on 7 May on The World Today, the interviewer asked:

So can we take it then that you have not sought any advice and you haven’t been given any advice from within the bureaucracy about the economic effects of your industrial relations policy?

The minister answered:

We understand the economic effects of our industrial relations policy. We understood them on the day we released it ...

What kind of arrogance is that? The minister does not need analysis, she does not need expert advice and she does not need Treasury advice! She can ignore Treasury advice because, through divine intuition, she understands the economic effects of her industrial relations policy! Oh no, she does not. The fact is that Treasury, the government’s own economic advisers, has provided the Labor government with not only advice provided to the previous government but also advice dated 13 December 2007. How do we know about this advice? Because the media organisations, the ABC, have sought, through the freedom of information laws, access to Treasury advice about the economic impact, particularly on inflation, of Labor’s workplace relations policies. Why would they do that? Labor says that it has a five-point plan to fight inflation, and within those five points there is no mention of the impact of workplace relations reforms or re-regulating the labour market, as the Labor government’s policy will do. It says it is about fighting inflation but it leaves out of its plan the most important factor, according to Treasury, to fight inflation—that is, a deregulated labour market and flexibility in the labour market without a roll back of the reforms of the last 10 years.

In accordance with the Prime Minister’s commitment to open government and in accordance with the Prime Minister’s professed belief in opening up the freedom of information laws, members will remember that he recently said in a speech to Fairfax newspapers that he wanted to ensure that the FOI laws ‘are compatible with a culture of disclosure and transparency’. The Prime Minister said:

Labor is committed to a culture of greater disclosure and transparency in government …

So, when the government is asked to produce the Treasury advice after the election—the advice that came on 13 December 2007 that goes to the very heart of this issue of inflation—about the impact of Labor’s workplace relations roll-back, what do you think it gave in response? Thirty blank pages.

See this speech in context