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

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Lilley proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The failure of the Government to acknowledge that new econometric modelling undertaken by the OECD casts grave doubt on the economic case advanced by the Government in support of its extreme industrial relations policies.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The economic case for the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations legislation changes is unravelling, and everyone in the chamber knows it. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Treasurer has the guts to defend it. The Prime Minister will not debate the Leader of the Opposition and the Treasurer will not come into this parliament and defend his case, because in terms of hard-edged economics the OECD has stripped away any case that could be made by this government for greater employment effects and greater wages effects from this extreme industrial relations package.

Since the introduction of the government’s industrial relations laws, the worst fears of Australian workers have been realised. Barely a week passes without fresh examples of unscrupulous employers sacking their employees unfairly, cutting their wages, or eroding their working conditions. We can debate the detail, but whether they are $40 a week worse off, $60 a week worse off or $90 a week worse off, the fact is that out there under the government’s extreme Work Choices policy the rights of millions of Australian workers are being eroded and their living standards are taking a hit. For many Australian workers there is no choice in Work Choices—except the choice between lower wages or no job. In recent weeks the horror stories have grown from a trickle to a stream. Soon, the inevitable logic of competition will ensure that this stream builds into a flood. Good employers are going to be forced to follow the lead of unscrupulous employers because of the inevitable need to compete. What is now clear is that lost in this flood will be the hopes and dreams and financial security of countless middle Australian families.

So what is the purpose of all this pain? Where is the gain? Why, as mortgages are getting bigger and credit card repayments are getting more unavoidable, is the Howard government cutting wages and attacking job security? According to this Prime Minister, the answer is fairly simple. For 30 years this Prime Minister has been standing in this chamber defending the one idea he believes in above all else, and that one idea is very simple. It is that radical labour market deregulation will lift employment and increase wages. This is the single creaky pole of economic logic propping up the new industrial relations changes. Every section of the act, every TV ad, every fire and brimstone defence in this chamber is leaning on that single creaky pole of the Prime Minister’s belief. That one idea is propping up the wholesale assault on the wages and working conditions of middle Australian families. It is an idea with a dark history, an idea with strong roots in the dark mills of 19th century England and the workhouses of the Industrial Revolution. It is an idea that has sent men down dangerous mines and locked women and children in sweatshops. It is also an idea that dominates the thinking of the Prime Minister. But everyone on this side of the House knows it is an idea whose time is well and truly up. Its time is up because the fundamental assertion that unchecked competition in the labour market will mean more jobs and better wages has been assassinated by a silver bullet of reality from the OECD.

This silver bullet was fired by the OECD in their 2006 Employment Outlook. One thing we know about this Prime Minister is that he has the courage of his prejudices. Every one of those dark prejudices is challenged in this OECD report. That wall of dogma that has dominated his thinking for the last 30 years is fundamentally challenged. What is the first prejudice that this Prime Minister has? He has a prejudice against the minimum wage. There has never been a minimum wage increase that this Prime Minister has welcomed. We know that if the Prime Minister had his way the minimum wage would be $50 less than it is at the moment, because John Howard has also always believed in reducing the minimum wage. He has argued that that will lead to a reduction in unemployment. What does the OECD have to say about that? This is the silver bullet that cuts away that wall of prejudice that underpins all of the legislation that is attacking the living conditions of the Australian people and ultimately putting at risk our prosperity, because underlying this legislation there is no hard-headed economics nor is there any social justice. What the OECD does fairly and squarely is rip away the Prime Minister’s economic prejudice. This is what the OECD concluded:

No significant direct impact of the level of the minimum wage on unemployment is identified ...

No. 1 prejudice washed down the drain! But do we get any acknowledgement of that from either the Prime Minister or the Treasurer? On the very day last week that this report was being published by the OECD, the Treasurer had the hide to come into this parliament and claim that a 1994 report from the OECD justified their attack on the minimum wage and wages of Australian workers. Fair dinkum, you would have thought he might have been just a tad embarrassed. On the very day that that embargoed report was upstairs, he was down here saying the opposite, knowing full well what was in the OECD report. On the minimum wage, the OECD went on to say:

The minimum wage could encourage higher participation, by helping to make work pay for the low skilled.

Isn’t that an arrow against not only their extreme industrial relations policies but their outrageous attack on many welfare recipients of this community whom they will not assist into the labour market to lift participation levels? They have consistently refused to provide the capacity-building programs and the incentive that is required to lift participation. We have a Treasurer who comes into this House and claims he is concerned about intergenerational challenges but he then puts in place a taxation system and a welfare system that actually stop or inhibit people from participating in the labour market whilst at the same time radically reducing their capacity to feed their families. This report blows the whistle on that approach across the board and strips bare the rhetoric from this government in defending these extreme policies.

In the Treasurer’s budget speech there was no mention of participation, and we know why: because this government has in place a raft of policies that the OECD now tell us we do require if we are going to maintain our prosperity by lifting our participation rate. Although the OECD do not quite say that in those words, the OECD have acknowledged that there is a link between fairness in society and good economic outcomes. We do not have to have a race to the bottom. We should not be taking our country down the food chain by cutting wages to compete with India and China. We should be taking our country up the food chain by investing in skills and lifting productivity so that we can compete with India and China. That is the way ahead for this country and that is why this agenda of that minister over there is so bankrupt, because it is not only unfair but is putting at risk the future prosperity of this country.

The second prejudice that this Prime Minister has been attached to for the last 30 years is his prejudice against unions, collective bargaining and collective agreements. This Prime Minister gets high on the thought that he can do something nasty to unions. The very thought that Australian workers might want to come together and be stronger as a result—through cooperating and bargaining in their workplace—goes to the heart of this government’s mean-spirited and narrow approach not only to economics but also to society. So look at what happens when that silver bullet hits prejudice No. 2. What does the OECD say? The OECD conclude that coordinated wage bargaining at the enterprise level is ‘found to significantly reduce unemployment’. Well it might, because we certainly know that has been the impact when we have had that in this country—something the government deny continuously and lie about in this House day after day and week after week.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lilley will withdraw ‘lie’.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The third prejudice of this Prime Minister is that we cannot have any decent protection for workers from unfair dismissal. He has ranted and raved about that. Of course we do need sensible unfair dismissal laws, but we have a Prime Minister who wants to rip them away altogether. He has done that for firms of a particular size. We have a Treasurer whose absurd position is that he does not want any unfair dismissal laws at all because he believes that is the way ahead in the 21st century. That is 19th century thinking. We in the Labor Party have 21st century thinking and now the OECD has shown 21st century thinking by raining on their parade and blowing away the economic underpinnings of their argument for this extreme industrial relations package. The OECD has said:

The impact of EPL—

that is, employment protection laws—

and union density on unemployment are statistically insignificant.

What a damning finding, which goes to the core of the very existence of the modern Liberal Party under Prime Minister Howard and Treasurer Costello, who made his name in politics by picking on little old ladies working in lolly factories. What is it about the government that they can ignore such fundamental hard-headed economics and put in place policies which so fundamentally rip away at the dignity of working people? What really drives their mean and narrow approach? They have always said that what drives their mean and narrow approach is that they are standing up for wealth creation and stronger prosperity in the future. The OECD has blown that away.

This report shows why the government have not done any economic modelling and certainly why they have not released any economic modelling to justify this extreme package. Last December the Secretary to the Department of the Treasury, Ken Henry, stated:

Treasury has never undertaken any modelling of the effects of the Government’s workplace relations reforms.

Now we know why. We know the answer, because the pre-eminent economic organisation in the world that this Treasurer quotes all the time when he is attacking us in this House has confirmed what fair dinkum modelling would show. That is selective quoting once again. This brings us back to the OECD report, which I seek leave to table.

Leave granted.

I particularly highlight chapter 7, which really sums up the nub of the case put by the OECD. This chapter contains comprehensive econometric analysis of policies that have impacted on employment and unemployment to date. It has resulted in the OECD moving away from a one-size-fits-all policy centred on radical deregulation of labour markets.

Let us examine their findings in some more detail. The key is summed up in figure 7.1 on page 211. This figure summarises the OECD analysis between the unemployment rate and selected institutions and policies over a 20-year period from 1982 to 2003. It highlights:

The correlation between the unemployment rate and employment protection laws is almost zero. The correlation between union density and unemployment is again almost zero. The correlation between unemployment rates and active labour market programs is almost -0.5. In other words, well-designed and active labour market programs are linked to low unemployment.

We all know that on this side of the House. A fundamental belief in active labour market programs goes to the dignity of every worker or potential worker in our society. We have had a belief in these programs since Chifley’s full employment paper, going right back to the postwar reconstruction. It is about time we saw some decent active labour market programs from this government, and we are not seeing them at all. The alarm bell has been rung by the OECD on your inattention here. Of course, your inattention to skills is also exposed for all to see, but so is your vandalism when it comes to tax—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lilley will refer to members by their electorate or title.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The vandalism of the government, when it comes to tax, is exposed because they draw attention to the tax wedge. You get higher unemployment when there is a large tax wedge—a large difference between what it costs an employer to employ a worker and what the worker gets in the hand. The government is operating a tax wedge on someone on minimum wages of 98c in every additional dollar they earn, and it wonders why we have low participation.

This is a government that has not put in place the raft of policies that are required to protect our prosperity—incentive across the board in the tax system that lifts participation, attendance to the skills of our workforce and education more broadly, attendance to innovation policies, and some national leadership when it comes to our national infrastructure. All of these things go to the core of productivity, and if we are going to protect prosperity in this country we need a raft of policies which lift productivity so we can create wealth and spread opportunity. (Time expired)

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The only thing that has been unravelling over the past week is the Leader of the Opposition’s foolish policy to rip up Australian workplace agreements. That is the collective judgment that has been made over the past week of the Leader of the Opposition and that policy. You would hardly think that you were looking at the same report as the member for Lilley if you were listening to his remarks and actually reading the report from the OECD. One thing which is quite clear from the OECD Employment Outlook 2006 is that it paints a highly favourable picture of Australia.

The member for Lilley said, ‘We want to see some decent labour market programs.’ I ask him, members opposite and the Australian public: what better decent labour market program is there than one that has driven down unemployment to 4.9 per cent? That is the lowest unemployment rate in this country for three decades. What sort of labour market program did we have under the Labor Party when unemployment in this country was in double digit figures? Unemployment was at well over 10 per cent, and yet over the past decade the economic management of this country by this government has seen a substantial fall in unemployment to 4.9 per cent. For the first time in 30 years in this country and the first time in the lifetime of many Australians there has been a 4 in front of the unemployment figure in this country.

Look at what the Labor Party proposed in its re-regulation of the labour market. Take not my views about this but the views of the Labor Party’s preferred economic modeller, Access Economics. Their analysis of the Labor Party’s proposals to re-regulate the Australian workforce was that the unemployment rate today would be closer to eight per cent—that is, some 315,000 Australians who have a job today, or who had jobs at the time of that analysis when the unemployment rate was still 5½ per cent, would not have a job. Yet the member for Lilley comes in here with his overblown rhetoric and talks about wanting to see some decent labour market programs. I think ordinary Australians understand that such programs have driven down unemployment to 4.9 per cent in this country and have seen more Australians employed than in any other period in our history. They have brought about real wage increases of 16.8 per cent into the bargain. Tax rates and inflation rates have fallen. Interest rates are a far cry from the double-digit interest rates I can remember when the Labor Party was in government, when small business was paying interest rates of over 20 per cent. This government’s programs of the last 10 years have delivered real and tangible benefits for the men and women of Australia and their families, yet we hear this rhetoric from the member for Lilley today.

Go back to the OECD report, because it points to Australia’s experiencing significant reductions in its unemployment rate—currently at a 30-year low of 4.9 per cent. The report also notes that the employment rates in Australia have risen markedly over the past decade, with more than 10 million Australians in work. We have more Australians employed in this country than at any other time in our history. It was not that long ago, when the Leader of the Opposition was the employment minister in the Hawke-Keating governments, that the number of unemployed in this country measured one million. When asked about that back then, the Leader of the Opposition conceded that the long-term unemployed were being left on the scrapheap. When asked about his job as employment minister, he also conceded that, of all the responsibilities he had when he was in government, that was the job in which he had the least interest. So it is a stark contrast to what we saw when the Leader of the Opposition was responsible for some of the economic management of Australia.

We can also see from the OECD report that Australia is one of the few countries that have combined stronger productivity growth performance with stronger job creation. We know something about productivity growth from the experience of the last 10 years, and it can be simply stated. Those businesses, industries and sectors of the Australian economy that have most embraced the flexibility of the workplace relations system introduced in Australia 10 years ago are also the businesses and sectors of the Australian economy that have had the highest productivity growth.

One of the stand-out examples of this is the mining and resources sector of Australia. I mention this sector because it is the wont of the member for Perth, the Leader of the Opposition and others opposite, when pointing to Australia’s current economic prosperity, to say that this is largely a result of the mining and resources sector. It is true that the mining and resources sector has contributed greatly to the prosperity we are enjoying, but here lies the internal contradiction of the Labor Party’s argument: you cannot say on the one hand that this sector of the Australian economy has led to this prosperity and that it is the reason we are enjoying prosperity today—with low unemployment, high employment, low interest rates, low inflation et cetera—yet say on the other hand that we want to rip away from the Australian mining and resources sector one of the very mechanisms that have helped it to achieve the prosperity and to thrive in the way it is today.

This was the central nub of the argument advanced last week by the chairman of Business Council of Australia, Mr Michael Chaney. The Business Council of Australia, along with virtually every other business organisation in this country, backed up by the editorial writers of almost every major newspaper in Australia, condemned as a retrograde step the decision of the Leader of the Opposition last weekend to rip up Australian workplace agreements and rip up in the process the advantages that more than half a million Australians and their families have derived from Australian workplace agreements. In his criticism of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Chaney said:

AWAs have played a significant part in improving productivity, particularly in sectors that are critical to Australia’s current and future growth, notably mining and resources.

The nub of the argument being advanced by the business community, by Mr Chaney amongst others, is that Australian workplace agreements—the thing that the Leader of the Opposition wants to rip up—have been critical in improving the productivity of the mining and resources sector in Australia.

If at any time in future somebody hears Kim Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, or Stephen Smith, the member for Perth, saying, ‘Our prosperity is a consequence of the mining and resources sector in Australia,’ they must ask the logical question, ‘Why would you want to rip away from that sector one of the things which the leaders of that sector say have led to that prosperity, which we all enjoy—not just the mining companies—in Australia?’ Over the past week we have not heard a single word from the Leader of the Opposition about this.

The reality is that the union movement—particularly in New South Wales, led by Mr Robertson—which has this implacable hatred of individual contracts in Australia, demanded of the Leader of the Opposition that he go to their conference and say that he will rip up AWAs. Cheered on by the comrades in the Sydney Town Hall, he thought this would be a popular move that the rest of Australia would congratulate him on. And they did not. The business community of Australia immediately said, ‘This will take Australia backwards.’ The editorial writers in Australia came out and said that this would take Australia backwards. No wonder there was a headline in the Australian on Thursday of last week: ‘Beazley another Latham: business’. What is the illusion? The troops out by Christmas, and AWAs out by Christmas. It was a foolish statement by the former Leader of the Opposition and an equally foolish one on these matters by this Leader of the Opposition.

The OECD report paints a favourable picture of Australia. It paints a picture similar to that which the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, painted on his visit to Canberra about a week ago. He said:

... Australia has taken important steps to become more flexible and at the same time keep its safety net structures, but this is an on-going movement, the world is changing, competition is shifting and labour laws have to reflect that fact.

…     …         …

... the labour laws, of not only the 1970s, but even the 1990s, are probably not the ones we need in the 21^st century.

That was the Managing Director of the IMF commenting on changes in labour laws in Australia, saying that, let alone going back to the 1970s, which is what the Leader of the Opposition is promising to do, even the labour laws of 10 years ago are not going to drive an economy like Australia’s in this century. This is the great divide in Australian politics at the present time. There is a government that is prepared to tackle the challenges of the future in Australia. That is what this government is prepared to do and that is the record of the last 10 years.

Preparedness and courage to tackle the future are not necessarily isolated to one side of politics or the other. Indeed, I think it is a fair concession to make that the Labor Party under Mr Hawke was prepared to tackle some of the challenges that Australia faced during the 1980s. This side of politics largely supported the then Labor government to tackle the challenges facing Australia. That stands in marked contrast to almost every reform that has been advanced by this government over the last 10 years, where we have seen implacable opposition from the Australian Labor Party to measures that will meet the challenges of Australia’s future. Industrial relations is just one more example of that today.

No wonder, according to media reports this morning, the Leader of the Opposition suggested to his comrades in caucus that Labor MPs should stop reading the opinion pages and start reading the letters pages. There are two things which are important about that. I know he does not want anybody to read the opinion pages because we have seen these sorts of headlines: the Daily Telegraph, ‘Sop to the unions’; the Australian, ‘Beazley bombs as economic manager’; a similar one from the Australian; the Advertiser in Adelaide, ‘Beazley fires wide of a sitting duck’; the West Australian, ‘Beazley plans return to an unwanted past’; the Herald Sun in Melbourne, ‘Beazley steps backwards’; and Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Beazley ties his future to the unions’. Probably the most apt one of all was in the Sydney Morning Herald editorial itself on Tuesday of last week, ‘Beazley’s real agenda: his job’.

So I can understand why the Leader of the Opposition would not want his colleagues in the Labor Party to be reading the opinion pages of the papers. He would not even want them to be reading the news pages today, because in the Australian, for example, there is the headline ‘Beazley’s gamble puts Labor behind’. Here is another one: ‘Workers lose $27 a week’. This refers to the proposal of the Leader of the Opposition. Another headline in the papers today reads ‘Beazley tears up his own contract’. This shows that Australians understand that the Leader of the Opposition is not prepared to have the courage to stand up for the future of Australia.

I also note why he wants them to read the letters pages rather than the opinion pages. The ACTU on its website has a media guide. It talks about writing letters to the editors of newspapers and jamming the phone lines of radio talkback and the like. Indeed, in one campaign, which involved emails, something like half the emails had actually come from people overseas and not in Australia. So this orchestrated campaign from the union movement is what he wants rather than some objective assessment of his foolish policy to rip up AWAs and to rip up the changes that Australians are enjoying at the present time.

The reality is that these changes over the last 10 years have been good for Australia. They have driven down unemployment. But the reality is also that there are still many hundreds of thousands of Australians who do not have a job, and I for one believe that we ought to create the conditions under which as many Australians as possible can get a job. That is what we are on about on this side of the House—not putting up the white flag, as the Leader of the Opposition has done in the past, and not surrendering to the union heavies at Sussex Street in Sydney who want to dictate policy to him. He needs to have the courage to do what Tony Blair did, and that was to stand up to the union movement and say, ‘These changes are good, because they are good for the ordinary men and women of this country.’ Had the Leader of the Opposition done that last weekend he would be in a significantly different position today from that which he is in with all the condemnation of his backflip over the last week.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is all very well for the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to read out headlines of papers. I have a headline that I would like to share with the House: ‘Wage cuts won’t boost jobs’. That was in today’s Age in an article by a leading economist, Tim Colebatch, which clearly shows that the OECD report that has just been released indicates that you do not have to go the low road to ensure economic prosperity. Indeed, the minister has already conceded that previous Labor governments were able to make the hard decisions and structural change—sometimes very difficult structural change—but the difference between those administrations and this government is that we did not inflict pain upon ordinary working families the way this government seeks to do.

The fundamental difference between the way in which previous Labor governments went about changing this economy—and let us not forget when you talk about changing the economy that it was Labor governments that fundamentally modernised this economy to ensure that Australians benefited from those changes—and this government is that those governments did not, as this government has, choose that ordinary working families would suffer. That is the result of these laws. The Work Choices legislation in effect is driving down wages and conditions of employment. We say to the government: go about change in a way which will ensure that ordinary working families will not be worse off. That has been clearly enunciated by the OECD report. There is a myth that you have to deregulate, that you have to have effectively a laissez-faire economy without any employment protection if we are going to prosper. Of course, the OECD report refutes that. In effect, the OECD has concluded that, when comparing a country and an economy that provides employment protections, encourages collective bargaining and spends on training, it is clear that such a country could yield an equally successful employment outcome.

So it is not the case that you have to choose the low road. Indeed, there are many countries that are comparable to ours in terms of their economy and standards of living that have chosen the high road. They have chosen to spend, for example, a greater proportion of their GDP on training and have been encouraging collective bargaining, encouraging protection to be afforded to employees and providing assistance to people who are out of the workforce, for whatever reason, enabling them to go back in and participate in the workforce.

This government has chosen to go the low road for a variety of reasons. One is that the Prime Minister has had an obsession about smashing unions. I hate to think that a government of this great country has chosen to put, in terms of public policy, its hostility towards employee organisations ahead of the prosperity of ordinary working families, but it has chosen to do that. The OECD has clearly illustrated that it is not necessary to deregulate, to remove employment protections, to remove all unfair dismissal laws in order to provide for a prosperous nation.

I will make some comparisons. For example, the government likes to boast that it has a low unemployment rate. We welcome the reduction in unemployment and always will. We welcomed it when the Hawke-Keating period ensured that the double-digit inflation and the double-digit unemployment of the Howard-Fraser years was turned around. But we turned that around without going down this low-road path and without inflicting pain on ordinary working Australians.

The OECD report does indicate that the unemployment level of this country is 4.9 per cent, which does not place us at the top of the rankings—in fact, it places us in the middle of the rankings of wealthy nations. If we were to compare ourselves to Iceland, Denmark, Netherlands and Norway, we would find ourselves far worse off in terms of unemployment levels. Those countries, which have levels of regulation and employment protections in their industrial relations systems, have far lower unemployment levels than this country.

It is not about us going down the road the government chooses. It is not for us to undertake an Americanisation of our system. Nor is it for us to go down the Scandinavian road. What we should be doing when we are looking at creating a system that will provide sufficient flexibility and ensure productivity improvements is looking at a system that is not going to divide this nation, that is not going to make the majority of employees worse off as a result of the changes. Bringing people along with us is critical—making sure that people in the main are winners, not losers. But this government, by introducing the Work Choices legislation, has chosen the low road, has chosen a road that will hurt ordinary workers. That is a great tragedy.

When we were going around the country, the industrial relations task force visited 20 electorates. We spoke to church groups, community groups, workers, employers and many other representative bodies. What we did not hear was: ‘Yes, you should cut wages or remove protections for employees in order to find ways to improve the economic growth of the nation.’ In fact, we heard amongst small businesses a concern that the government had gone too far. We have heard again today that small businesses are not supporting the government’s Work Choices laws, in the main. There may well be a few people out there who are supporting them, but I have not seen too many small businesses get up publicly and say that they love these new laws. I have heard them say that they find them prescriptive, that the ministerial capacity to intervene between the parties is unprecedented and that the laws are cumbersome and complex—1,200 pages of laws is supposed to be simplifying the system, is it? That is not what we are hearing when we speak to small businesses, including, for example, a manager at a Hertz rental car company in Launceston, in the seat of Bass in Tasmania. He expressed fears that the legislation was out of step with basic Australian values. He told us in February this year:

We are supposed to be a society and an Australian society is supposed to have a reputation of being egalitarian and a fairly evenly divided society. We have travelled overseas and we have seen the gap between rich and poor, abject poverty and absolute wealth.

That was a concern expressed by a small business operator who thought that the way in which this government is choosing to go is in fact dividing this nation between the haves and have nots—not bringing people along with it or ensuring that the growth being produced is being shared widely. Clearly, that has not been the case. If it were the case, we would not hear such criticisms.

The government therefore really has failed to embrace the path that the Hawke-Keating government chose to go down when reforming the economy. Yes, there were some hard decisions made by those administrations. In fact, they deserve great credit in fundamentally altering this society in order to ensure that we had a modern economy and that there were flexibilities in place to ensure growth. But they placed protections in the system. We devolved from central wage fixing into enterprise bargaining, but we did so in a way that would not allow employees to be worse off as a result of that devolution. So we did modernise the industrial relations system, we actually broke the back of the double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment that occurred under the Howard-Fraser years. But we chose to protect people along the way.

Unfortunately, this government have sought to go after employees. It may well be purely through their hatred of unions that they have allowed the most vulnerable in our community to be the target of this legislation, but in the end the Australian people will not forget. They know exactly what has gone on here. They know that Work Choices provides no choice at all for them. They are aware that their conditions of employment are vulnerable. Effectively, now, with the removal of unfair dismissal laws, more than half the workforce of this nation is precariously employed. We had a quarter of the workforce that was casualised. By changing the laws for those employees working for companies with fewer than 100 employees we have effectively ensured that over half the workforce is precariously employed—and that is just not on. That is an absolute disgrace and a tragedy. (Time expired)

Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many people in this place, I suppose, prior to coming here I had a long association with the trade union movement in Australia. I worked for 10 years with an industry superannuation fund, and thank goodness the days when they called industry super funds ‘union funds’ are gone. Whilst I was with that fund, for almost a decade I was a paid-up and card-carrying member of the Finance Sector Union of Australia. Like many people, I have seen the bad side of unionism. I have seen some terrible things happening—people going out on strikes and eventually losing jobs and industries being shut down—but I have also seen the good side of unionism and people genuinely committed to the worker and to trying to find them a better outcome in their place of employment. I have also worked for wages. I have been on the end of a crowbar and a shovel. I have mustered cattle. I have ploughed paddocks. I have laid tiles and cleaned concrete formwork in the construction industry. I have also been self-employed. I sold welding alloys for a long time in western Queensland and some parts of Victoria. I have been self-employed selling advertising space and insurance and investment products. I have been a company director. And I have done a whole range of other jobs.

I do not think that makes me unique on this side of the House. On this side of the House we have people who have served in a wide range of occupations—in sales and as aircraft pilots, physicists, doctors, lawyers and economists. You name it; pretty well every occupation is covered by members on this side of the House. When you have a look at the other side of the House, you see that it is comprised mainly of hacks. There are 88 caucus members. Of those 88 caucus members, there are 41 former union officials, 34 former political staffers, six former union lawyers, nine former state parliamentarians and six to whom I refer as Labor royalty. You have to ask, when you see this matter of public importance and how it is being debated, what the people who have proposed this debate actually know about it. I looked at what the OECD says about Australia’s new workplace relations system. The OECD has been a strong supporter of the government’s workplace reforms for quite some time. The OECD’s Economic survey of Australia 2004 said:

To further encourage participation and favour employment, the industrial relations system also needs to be reformed so as to increase the flexibility of the labour market, reduce employment transactions costs and achieve a closer link between wages and productivity. Regulatory requirements for collective and for individual agreements should be eased so that they can replace awards.

The IMF has also been a very strong supporter of the government’s reform program. In their Staff report for the 2005 article IV consultation on Australia, prior to the introduction of these reforms, the IMF stated:

There is now an exceptional opportunity to implement further reforms to sustain and improve Australia’s strong economic performance. In particular, employment and productivity can be improved by implementing proposed reforms of labor markets and welfare policies.

Sharan Burrow, the President of the ACTU wrote to the IMF. In October last year, David Burton, the Director of the Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF, responded to her letter. He said:

... IMF staff recognized that Australia has already made substantial progress towards a more flexible labor market. As noted in the staff report, this improvement in flexibility, supported by increased competition in goods markets and other structural reforms, has been an important contributor to Australia’s excellent record of job creation and productivity growth during the past 14 years.

Having said that, you have to wonder what is driving the Australian Labor Party and why the Labor Party and their union allies have been running around for the last few months predicting the end of civilisation as a result of the Work Choices legislation. We heard that the sky was going to fall in. We heard that women and children were going to be murdered, that there would be more divorces, class warfare, lower fertility rates and no more weekend barbeques. Almost two months into the operation of Work Choices, this doomsaying from the Labor Party has been exposed for what it is—pure and utter hysteria. Criticisms of Work Choices by the Labor Party and the union movement are more about the fear of union bosses of losing their privileged status than they are about the confected outrage over rights at work that we have seen recently.

Mr Beazley has in the last week or so decided to turn his attack on Australian workplace agreements. Almost one million Australians have entered into AWAs since 1996, and Mr Beazley wants to deny them the chance to have their say on their working conditions so that he can keep sweet with unions.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Solomon will refer to members by their seat or their title.

Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker; I meant to say the Leader of the Opposition. John Robertson, the leader of Unions NSW, gave us a hint on what it is that Mr Beazley is looking to do in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition of 10 and 11 June, in which he said:

The big-ticket item is to keep the ALP standing firm on abolishing Australian workplace agreements—something some of the mates in Canberra are agitating to water down. It’s unbelievable—finally we have an issue that connects with the labour heartland and these geniuses want to finesse the message. Just say no!

I think most people would have heard by now that employees on AWAs earn an average of 13 per cent more than those employees covered by certified agreements, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Leader of the Opposition’s plan to abolish AWAs flies in the face of the flexibility that we need in the labour market in the 21st century. The fact is that Western democracies with the lowest levels of unemployment—such as Australia, the UK and New Zealand—have deregulated their labour markets. Those places where there are highly regulated markets—such as France, Germany and Spain—also lead in high levels of unemployment.

Where I come from, the Northern Territory, it is pretty common knowledge that we have some fairly high wages. And it is no coincidence that, in the Northern Territory, there are some 13,366 workplace agreements already in place. In my electorate of Solomon alone there are 8,082 workplace agreements. There are 5,284 workplace agreements in the electorate of Lingiari. That is an extraordinarily high proportion of the working population—more so, I suppose, than in any other state or territory in Australia. As I say, it is no coincidence that wages in the Territory, on average, are higher. That is being driven, obviously, by AWAs.

AWAs allow employees to be more flexible with their employers. They deliver better benefits. But all this is being jeopardised by the Labor Party and the Leader of the Opposition. As I said yesterday, in speaking about the Aboriginal land rights act, some people in the Labor Party see it as in their interests to keep Aboriginal people subservient. I think the same attitude applies here where they want to keep the workers subservient. They want to have a Communist enclave in the workplace. They want workplaces to be highly regulated, and that is not the view of this government. (Time expired)

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

The discussion has concluded.