Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

Not as much as they gave you. The passage of this bill will see the unions achieve seriously enhanced rights at the disputation and wage discussion levels. Previously, members on the other side of this House spoke about a new golden era, an end to the conflict between capital and labour, an end to the conflict between bosses and workers, but we still have those on the other side interjecting, crawling back to those older, dark days of conflict between workers and employers, to the old, dark days of the politics of envy. That is really at the heart of what the union movement is trying to re-establish with this bill. If you create that division, you create the politics of envy.

Through the passage of this bill we will see the unions achieve seriously enhanced rights at the disputation and wage discussion levels. There is not even a need for there to be one employee as a union member for the union to have carte blanche access to a workplace and its employment records. The imposition of good faith bargaining is a backwards step, and the rise of compulsory arbitration is something Labor explicitly said they would not bring back. The same can be said for pattern bargaining—again not promised by Labor last year but mysteriously appearing as a possibility in the legislation. This is not the thing to be introducing at the current time. It will certainly not offer any freedom or flexibility that will be required in an industrial relations regime that will need to adapt to a looming economic downturn. Does this bill stand the test of putting more people in jobs and creating the economic conditions to keep them gainfully employed? Does this bill stimulate economic growth and activity or will it dramatically weaken labour market conditions at a time of economic decline and great uncertainty? These are the things that should be asked of this serious rewriting of the industrial relations landscape in Australia.

Debating this bill with the government forecasting an economic downturn and increased unemployment allows us to look back at the crowning glory of the Howard years: more jobs and higher pay. These are the facts that cannot be denied by the opposition. We will never forget the double digit unemployment that Labor foisted on the community. There was the 10.9 per cent unemployment peak in December 1992, with a million Australians out of work. Teenage unemployment peaked at 34.5 per cent in July of that year. My generation had forlorn prospects in the labour market as they moved out of university and training—a depressing reminder of Labor’s inability to manage the economy and create opportunities for young people. I seriously hope that there will not be another generation of young Australians who have to suffer what those young Australians suffered in the early nineties.

There are some serious tests ahead for the government in managing the economy. Their response so far in policy decisions does not fill me with particular confidence. Harking back to a rigid and union-dominated workplace relations system would be the worst thing for Australia at the current time. We do need to resist throwbacks to the past. We need to look forward. We need to maintain some sort of positive economic momentum in order to safeguard jobs and employment prospects for the people of Australia. Without the creation of jobs, without a positive economic outlook and without growth there is no positive future for Australian families. We are all in this place to create a better future and a better Australian society. Without the possibility of jobs and jobs growth we cut the ground from underneath them. I am very concerned that this bill will do nothing to create jobs but, in such greatly uncertain economic times, will do everything to entrench the power of the union movement, whose representation in the workforce is illustrative of their inability to convince those in the workforce that they are acting in their interests and that they are worthy of being a representative organisation for workers. After this bill has been passed, I look forward not with great optimism but with great concern about the future prospects for jobs, particularly for young people and for this nation.

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