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

No, she will not say it in the House. The minister said it on Sky News. The minister has said repeatedly that there is no advice. We know that there was advice on 13 December 2007. But while on Sunday she was busily telling Sky’s Agenda that there was no advice within government—as remarkable as it seems, she said that with a straight face—over on Channel 10 on Meet the Press the Minister for Finance and Deregulation was being asked about this advice. He took the ‘The bureaucrats are to blame’ defence and said, ‘We do not release Treasury advice.’ Yes, they do. The Treasurer had released Treasury advice on savings just a week before because it suited their purposes. But, because the advice will prove that Labor’s roll-back of workplace relations laws will drive up inflation and will cost jobs, they are hiding that advice from the Australian people.

But then the Minister for Finance and Deregulation said in response to a question: ‘Our advice’ does not support that proposition. ‘Our advice’ does not support that? I thought they had no advice. So I say to the minister—I would say it to the minister if she had bothered to come into this matter of public importance debate—through whoever is sitting on the front bench: which is it? Does the government have advice, as the finance minister said, or does the government not have advice, as the employment minister says? One of them is not being frank with the Australian people. The minister for employment says there is no advice; the minister for finance says they have advice—‘our advice’. We know that the Treasurer has advice, dated 13 December 2007.

In an approach that is becoming, shall we say, the minister’s trademark, when in another interview on Sky’s Sunday Agenda the minister was asked about how many jobs would be lost under Labor’s roll-back of industrial relations laws she continued to claim that there would be no job losses. But—problem!—the Treasurer admitted last week that there will be job losses under Labor’s policies. He has admitted that unemployment will increase under Labor. As the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations—there are plenty of jobs there to go around, aren’t there?—was asked about this repeatedly, she refused to answer the question.

Labor is hiding from the Australian public the advice they have on how many job losses there will be under their roll-back of workplace relations reforms. They have refused to release the modelling, analysis and research that we know exists, that they know exists and that the media certainly knows exists on the future of job losses in Australia and the future of people’s job security. So we ask again: how many jobs will be lost, will be sacrificed, on the altar of this minister’s ego and this government’s arrogance? They are hiding this information from the Australian people, all the while pretending that they do not have advice when they do, and hiding behind bureaucrats by blaming them for the decision to produce 30 blank pages in response to a freedom of information request.

Sadly, there is a sense of deja vu about this government. We just have to cast our minds back to the last time Labor was in government, when through its industrial relations policies unemployment was driven to 11 per cent. There were one million people unemployed in this country the last time Labor was in government. Then we had 10 years of workplace reform, during which unemployment decreased to the lowest level in three decades. Unemployment reached four per cent—less than half what it was when we came to government in 1996. It was 11 per cent under Paul Keating, down to four per cent under Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello. That was because of a series of reforms—waterfront reform, tax reform, workplace relations reform and welfare reform. The policies of the previous government drove down unemployment. Over 2.2 million jobs were created and real wages increased by 20 per cent. Through our policies of labour market deregulation we saw more jobs created than at any single time in Australia’s history—2.2 million new jobs. We were able to contain inflation by continuing to put flexibility into the workplace, and real wages were able to rise by 20 per cent over a decade without the wages inflation spiral that drove this economy into recession the last time a Labor government was in power. (Time expired)

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