Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the suspension of standing orders motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition because it gives me an opportunity to explain to the House why the standing orders should not be suspended. The government should be allowed to get on with its program of trying to fix the Australian economy and repair the damage left to us by a very bad government after six years of mismanagement and malpractice of the budget, industrial relations and the economy of this country. If the opposition were serious about trying to help the workers of Australia and were serious about economic growth, they would not be moving to suspend the standing orders and delay the House from getting on with its business; they would be allowing the House to get on with its program of abolishing the carbon tax, abolishing the minerals resource rent tax, bringing back the Australian Building and Construction Commission to put a tough cop on the industrial beat, introducing the registered organisations commission to stop dodgy union officials from ripping off the hardworking union members who join their unions, and supporting a Heydon royal commission into union governance and corruption.

If the opposition were serious about repairing the Australian economy and joining with the government, they would not be blocking savings measures in the Senate right now—$5 billion of their own savings measures they announced before the election. Inexplicably they now oppose these measures in the Senate along with other savings resolutions that we announced before the election and reaffirmed in MYEFO. If the opposition were serious about supporting jobs growth in Australia, they would not be wasting the time of the House on suspending the standing orders; they would be getting out of the way of the government in reducing regulation and red tape, and supporting the Minister for the Environment's program of a one-stop shop for environmental approvals across Australia so that development can get moving and so that the investment pipeline can start employing workers across Australia. But we know that the opposition will not do that, because they are not genuinely interested in workers' jobs at all. The most startling aspect of the Leader of the Opposition's motion is his breathtaking hypocrisy. He was the minister for workplace relations from December 2011 to September 2013. In that period unemployment climbed from 624,000 to 697,000. In that period 72,900 Australians lost their jobs, their employment, across many businesses—big, medium and small—around Australia when he was the minister for workplace relations. So 72,900 jobs hang around his neck that were lost on his watch. That is more people than the electors in Lingiari, that is more people than the electors in Solomon, that is more people than the electors in Bass, that is more people than the electors in Braddon, that is more people than the electors in Denison. The Leader of the Opposition is responsible for the loss of more jobs in more people's homes than the number of electors in the six seats of those members of the House.

So it is breathtaking in its extraordinariness that the Leader of the Opposition would come into this place and try to wear the clothes of concern for the workers of Australia, because it was under his watch that the Australian Building and Construction Commission was firstly defanged and then abolished. It was under his watch, in cahoots with Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister and the former member for Lalor, that he ensured the union movement got everything it wanted from the previous government. This was exposed by Martin Ferguson in Peter Hartcher's column in TheSydney Morning Herald about what went wrong for Labor. He pointed out that there was a secret meeting at Kirribilli House—another Kirribilli pact—in which Julia Gillard said to the union movement, 'In exchange for complete support against Kevin Rudd, we will do whatever you want us to do'. And so by the end of the Gillard government it was the union's agenda that was entirely in place.

After six years of a Labor government, we inherited a wreckage of an economy, a wreckage of a budget and an industrial relations system that was sclerotic, paralysed and in crisis. It is those problems that we are attempting to address through our policies. And so we are setting about repairing the budget; we are setting about clearing the hurdles for development approvals; we are setting about reducing red tape and regulation, not least of which is in my own portfolio through international education. I am working with the minister for immigration in streamlining the visa-processing arrangements so that more good Australian businesses can grow their businesses as we employ more Australians in international education. We are deregulating the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to allow more deregulation in higher education to grow the economy. And that is just in my portfolio.

We are reducing waste of taxpayers' dollars by stopping the boats through Operation Sovereign Borders. Over time we will save billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. We are getting on with the agenda, and the Labor Party should let us get on with our agenda. And this suspension of standing orders—

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