Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Wannon asks: 'Why don't pie shop workers have choices?' Even those who cannot even warm a pie should have choice. Those who serve a cold pie and those who serve a warm pie should have choice. The problem is that in every aspect of workplace relations on your watch we have seen a reregulation of the labour market. This has cost jobs, this has sent up wages and this has seen lower productivity.

The CEO of Santos, David Knox, said on the front page of the Financial Review that if he was to open a gas facility in the Gulf of Mexico it would be one third of the price of opening a similar facility in Australia. Why? It is because wages are out of control in this country. Productivity, by any international standard, is falling in this country. We have more than five million Australians employed in more than two million small businesses, and they complain every day to me about the unfair dismissals and the penalty rates that the other side has introduced.

We need to get a smarter, more efficient and more effective workforce. We will not do that by letting the unions dictate the policies. Fair Work Australia is discredited under this government. Productivity has come down, wages have gone up and we have not seen an improvement in the bottom line of companies. When we look around the world we see the economic troubles that are facing Europe, the United States and elsewhere. What has this government decided to do? It has decided to re-regulate the workforce and send productivity down and wages up with no commensurate gain for the Australian people.

On this particular legislation before this House we are seeing those opposite play a sop to the union movement. Their union masters are dictating the policy that they bring into this House. This is a bad outcome for the workers of Australia because the Productivity Commission, an independent body which so often provides intelligent information for this House to consider, has found that you need to broaden out the default super funds beyond the industry super funds alone.

The industry super funds are a reflection of the vested interests of the union movement. This goes back to the Hawke and Keating years in the 1990s, when they sought to put industry super funds at the centre of our workplace relations system. Why do more than 50 per cent of the directors on the industry super funds come from the union movement when the union movement represents only 12 per cent of the private sector workforce and about 18 per cent of the general workforce? The number of people who are prepared to pay their union money has gone down year after year. People are voting with their feet.

I say to the members on this side of the House that we will take a tough, strong stance against the union dominated Labor Party, which is producing bad policy for the people based on politics alone. Default super funds deserve to be expanded beyond just industry funds and that is why we on this side will support changes in government and we on this side will not tolerate bad legislation from this government. (Time expired)

See this speech in context