Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of the case of my constituent Omir Majstrovic who had been employed by Formbrace Pty Ltd since 1998 but was dismissed after lodging a workers compensation claim? Is the Prime Minister further aware that Formbrace is claiming to have 97 employees and therefore to be exempt from unfair dismissal laws? Is the Prime Minister also aware that Formbrace has offered just one week’s salary as compensation to this father of three for the loss of his job? Isn’t this another example of the government’s extreme industrial relations policy in action?

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

I am not personally aware of those circumstances. If the honourable member wants to provide me again with what he has put to me and anything extra I will have the matter investigated and I will give him a reply because he is entitled to it. It may well be that there has been an unlawful termination. I do not know and until I get all the details of the case I am not going to offer a view.

I make two other comments. Sometimes cases of this nature that have been raised by the opposition have on closer examination turned out to be at teeny-weeny bit astray from the facts. I am not making that allegation in relation to this particular case but I was taught a long time ago ‘show me your company and I will tell you who you are’ in terms of political affiliations.

The other point I would make is that it is now 6 September, and Work Choices was introduced on 27 March. Two predictions were made about Work Choices. One prediction was that wages would be slashed. We have seen the first returns. The early returns on that are not too encouraging for the opposition. They show that wages have gone up by two per cent over the last quarter. The second, even more important, return that has come in is that thus far we have seen 159,000 new jobs generated—the largest job generation for any quarter of the 10 years that this government has been in office. There are some employment figures coming out tomorrow. I do not know what is in them, and I will not speculate. Let me simply say that we have had three months, with 159,000. Five and a half months have now gone by and the world has not come to an end. The sky has not fallen in. Most of the claims made by the opposition have turned out to be wrong. Wages have not been driven down—in fact, they have gone up. In other words, nothing has worked out for the opposition but a lot has worked out for the people of Australia.