Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, unemployment. I am glad to be corrected. It has kept unemployment low, increased participation and protected wages and conditions, particularly if you look in comparison to the United States of America or the United Kingdom, both of which have freer markets than ourselves and higher unemployment rates. I think we have put the lie that lower wages lower your unemployment rate to bed for all time. Obviously there are more complicated things that go on in the economy.

We know what happened prior to this. The member for Mayo knows exactly what happened under the Work Choices act that he was one of the architects of. We know that wages were cut. We know that penalty rates were cut and people were dismissed unfairly. We know that AWAs were used to undermine other agreements. And we know that the Australian people were greatly aggrieved by that act. We know that they did not like it, no matter how much the member for Mayo tries to say otherwise. Actually, I am never sure whether he is running away from it or running to it these days. It is a bit hard to establish. One minute he says, 'Oh, no.' But then he says things that seem to point you in one direction. But that is a debate within his own party, no doubt. He and Peter Reith are out there waging a policy war, and who are we to stop them?

We know that Fair Work Australia has also done a number of agreements, such as with Australia Post and Woolworths. In fact, there have been 10,800 agreements covering 1.5 million employees. All of these agreements have been done without fanfare or incidents. They have been completed by good faith negotiation and registered with Fair Work Australia. So we know that there is a great degree of cooperation out there in the workforce. We know that there are large numbers of companies, employees and unions all getting together, negotiating in good faith, coming to an agreed set of wages and conditions and then getting on with the business of making money and, for the workers, getting on with the business of doing their work.

Tragically, in the last couple of days I think we have seen a situation where a company has taken a very extreme path and we have seen our Flying Kangaroo turned into an angry leprechaun—an angry, nasty leprechaun—that wants to inconvenience the Australian public. Our national carrier has embarked on an orchestrated and premeditated assault on consumers; not on workers but on consumers. The flying public and the public interest have been completely disregarded, I think, in this whole process. It is one thing not to have good faith negotiations with your workers, but to inconvenience people who have paid for a ticket and expect to get home or to their holidays or place of business is pretty surprising. It is unusual that the national carrier would inconvenience people in such a regard.

It is worth establishing the facts of this dispute. It is about two things: wages and job security. Looking at what the unions have done, the TWU want a pay rise, and for people who work outside handling heavy bags I think that is quite reasonable. I think it is reasonable for baggage handlers to have a pay rise. I think it is pretty reasonable for them to expect that they should have some job security over the life of the agreement. They have had eight hours of protected industrial action. The pilots have worn red ties—oh my God!—and they have made some announcements over the PA, which we have all heard. The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association suspended their industrial action on 20 October.

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