Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let me give a bit of a lecture to the previous speaker. During Senate estimates on 29 May 2006, when right-wing rubbish was rampant under John Howard and Peter Costello, the head of the Office of the Employment Advocate detailed that in a sample of four per cent, or 250, of the 6,263 Australian workplace agreements lodged during April 2006—after Work Choices was introduced—100 per cent removed at least one protected award condition. Sixty-four per cent removed annual leave loading, 63 per cent stripped out penalty rates, 52 per cent cut shift loadings, 40 per cent dropped gazetted public holidays, and 16 per cent slashed award conditions. That's what happened when it was a free-for-all under the coalition. That's their tory commitment to the market.

Don't give us lectures here, saying you're going to increase wages and it might have happened in the 10th year of that government under Abbott and Turnbull and the member for Cook. Don't give us lectures about that, because, if you ever get control of the Senate and get a chance to bring in Work Choices, you'll do it again. Those are the facts. That's your unlimited, unbridled Adam Smith type market. So don't give us and the workers of this country lectures, because this is an opposition that, when it was in government, brought in the Australian Building and Construction Commission to prosecute and persecute workers and workplaces and to drive down wages, as the former finance minister said. It was their design feature. They're about keeping wages low. Wages as a percentage of GDP have never been lower than they are now. We need to improve wages outcomes for workers. Those opposite are like Chicken Little. Honestly! Seriously! From the ridiculous, nonsensical rubbish attitudes we've seen, you'd think that somehow Vladimir Lenin sits over this side. That's the way they go on. Some of the statements the member for Longman has made about communism and socialism are just rubbish.

I'll tell you what we did. We supported people in the aged-care sector. We put in a submission to the Fair Work Commission to actually make sure that people who worked in the feminised industries, including low-paid workers in aged care, got a pay rise—a 15 per cent increase. I'll tell you what those opposite did when they sat over here: $1.2 million taken out of workforce supplements—a wage cut, effectively, for those in the aged-care sector. So Labor governments support wage increases. Those opposite mouth platitudes. It's simply rubbish the way they go on about it. They mouth platitudes: somehow the market will magically and mysteriously lift it up. They've had nine years in government to increase wages. There wasn't a MYEFO or a budget where the subsequent wages outcome was at least level with or better than in the Treasury papers. Wages were always lower. Those opposite come in here and introduce matters of public importance like this one today, when they've got no answers and had no answers for nine years, except the unbridled market.

I ran a business for 20 years. I built it up from virtually nothing. I had dozens and dozens of workers working with me and for me. I know that small and medium-sized businesses like the one I ran, which I was a shareholder and a director in, work in a cooperative, collegiate way, and they work together many times with their workers' representatives, with the unions who represent those workers. I have to tell you that union members are Australians as well. I've heard those opposite disparage them. They're Australians as well, and they're entitled to be represented by the people they choose. We live in a democracy. We believe in democracy here. How about democracy also in the workplace, where people have a right to decide how they bargain and deal with their employers? There are plenty of people on this side of the chamber who have been employers and have dealt with unions and with employees in the workplace to get good outcomes.

This matter of public importance is simply an opposition looking for relevance, not able to find their feet. We see it in question time every day. If they had answers, during this particular discussion they would have given them. Not one person from those opposite gave us one answer except the unbridled market. They failed in government and they've failed in opposition. (Time expired)

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