Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is also to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to Esselte, an American multinational, the largest general office products manufacturer in the world, with an Australian subsidiary. Is the Prime Minister aware that Esselte Australia has offered employees at one of its New South Wales warehouses an AWA which provides for an increased rate of pay of $1.25 per hour above the current enterprise agreement hourly rate of pay but scraps Saturday penalty rates, scraps Sunday penalty rates, reduces penalty rates for public holidays and does not provide for a wage increase during the three-year term of the AWA? Isn’t it the case that this AWA leaves a full-time employee working a Saturday shift $65 a week—

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

Order! The member for Perth is asking his question and deserves to be heard.

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Isn’t it the case that this AWA leaves a full-time employee working a Saturday shift $65 a week, or $10,140 over three years, worse off?

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

I am not familiar with the circumstances of that particular case and, as I have indicated in response to other questions of this kind, I am not, I regret to inform the member for Perth, hardly to his surprise, in possession of detailed knowledge of each and every employment arrangement made in this country. But I am in possession of the broad economic outcomes that have been achieved under this government and I am in possession of all the warnings of doom and destruction, unemployment and industrial disputation that were made 10 years ago when we made some changes. I am absolutely certain that, just as those predictions were incorrectly made and were not borne out by subsequent experience, so it will be that the experiences of the Australian workforce under the government’s new policies will be ones of increasing employment, rising real wages and continued growth of the Australian economy.