Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the 40 employees in Mount Druitt on the 2c an hour Spotlight Australian workplace agreement. Prime Minister, isn’t it the case that Spotlight has 86 other stores across the nation, employing nearly 6,000 staff? Won’t Spotlight’s 2c an hour AWA wages race to the bottom just spread like wildfire from Mount Druitt across the nation?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The answer to the question is no. I also point out to the Chief Opposition Whip that it is of course consistent with the tactics being used by the opposition in this matter to describe their employment conditions as being ‘2c an hour’. The reality is that 38 of the new staff employed at Mount Druitt were previously unemployed. While they were on the unemployment benefit, they received $205.30 a week. Under the AWA, these employees would receive $543.40 a week. So what I would call these AWAs are contracts of employment that provide remuneration increases of $338 a week for each of those employees.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Irwin interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Fowler!

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What the Labor Party in this nation cannot and will not understand are the beliefs and the philosophies of a Labour Party leader who has won three general elections in the United Kingdom, and that is my good friend Tony Blair. On 9 September 1997, when addressing the Trades Union Congress in London, he told them that the old days of going out on strike and promoting class division were over. Let me quote his words. They should be written in stone for every member of the Australian Labor Party. He said:

You should remember in everything you do that fairness at work starts with the chance of a job in the first place …

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Irwin interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Fowler is warned!

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chifley knows better than anybody in this parliament that the unemployment level, despite the great improvement around the nation, is higher in his electorate and we have done something for the people of his electorate. We have, in the words of Tony Blair, given them ‘the chance of a job’. I will always be proud of policies that give to the men and women of Western Sydney the chance of a job. That is why, in the last election campaign when I spoke to the people of Western Sydney in launching the government campaign, the proudest boast I made in appearing to them and asking for re-election of the members representing those seats was that, in the time we had been in government, we had provided to the people of Western Sydney lower taxes, lower interest rates, lower unemployment rates and chances of work that no Labor government could ever dream of, let alone implement.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The level of interjections is far too high.