Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the chamber for allowing me to continue. The government does have confidence in its growth forecasts. Of course, we would all prefer wages growth to be higher than it has been. We are experiencing situations similar to those that have occurred in other Western democracies and economies around the world.

I would remind the member for Gorton, who has been here some time, that in fact wages growth was 19.8 per cent over the period of the Howard government. I picked that figure out from my memory, so it may be wrong, but I think that is pretty close to the mark. During the Keating-Hawke period, however, wages growth was less than two per cent—1.9 per cent over that period versus 19.8 per cent. In the boom years of the Howard government, apparently the Howard government—and Labor would paint us as not being the friends of the worker—were in fact the government that delivered exponential wages growth because of the combination of our policies. There were of course good policies in the Hawke and Keating period which the then opposition, both the Peacock-led opposition and the Howard-led opposition, supported. But I can say that, if you line up the two records of Labor and the coalition, our record during the Howard period far surpasses the record of the Labor Party.

The member for Gorton also talked about penalty rates. This is one of the most wonderful attempts at chutzpah from the Labor Party that even I have seen in my period in parliament, because it was the member for Gorton himself who very eloquently, in my view, on 15 February 2016—so not that long ago—said:

Labor believes that the FWC—

the Fair Work Commission—

is the appropriate body to consider these matters and it should be left alone by the Liberals to do just that, conduct its business as the independent umpire.

And of course, in the effluxion of time, the Fair Work Commission in its great wisdom has defused the issue of penalty rates for some awards on Sundays by introducing these changes over a three-year transition period. The air has well and truly gone out of the balloon of the Labor Party's campaign on penalty rates. I was surprised—

An opposition member interjecting—

Well, it is apposite that the member for Dawson is present today, because the member for Dawson has been a very strong advocate for two particular groups in his electorate over the time that he has been the member for Dawson: firstly, for small business and the chance to give them the opportunity to grow. That is why he strongly supports, as we all do on this side of the Chamber, the company tax cuts for small and medium enterprises, which have been opposed by the Labor Party—inconsistently, given the comments of the Leader of the Opposition when he was the minister in the Gillard government. Secondly, the member for Dawson supports the workers in his electorate. He wants to ensure, as I do, as we all do, that his workers are paid a fair wage for a fair day's work. So I commend the member for Dawson, as I commend all members of the House for their support for both the workers in their electorates and the small businesses in their electorates. On this side of the Chamber, we are reducing taxes as we did in the budget and last year's budget. We are reducing taxes on incomes. We are reducing taxes on companies. We are encouraging investment and growth in the economy, which all leads to jobs. It was not that long ago that the Labor Party used to support that.

Now, the member for Dobell asked me questions about young people and unemployment in her electorate. I come from South Australia, and there is no doubt that there are geographic parts of our society that are not doing as well as others. There is no doubt about that. With the passing of the mining boom from the construction phase into the extraction phase, that is particularly felt keenly in areas like the electorate of the member for Dawson and in Western Australia and other areas where mining has been a staple part of the economy.

That is why the government is trying to expand and diversify some of the key parts of our economy like my own portfolio of defence industry, with the biggest military build-up in our nation's history in peacetime driving jobs and growth. In the Central Coast, the member for Robertson has strongly supported the establishment of a medical school by the University of Newcastle at the Gosford.

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