Mark Baker (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister advise the House of recent developments in the Australian labour market and what they mean for my electorate of Braddon?

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

I thank the member for Braddon for his question about something that is important to all Australians—that is, the fact that figures that came out today show that our unemployment rate remains at or near a 30-year low. An additional 23,400 jobs were created in August, 22,600 of which were full-time jobs. There have now been 1.9 million new jobs created in Australia since March of 1996 and, importantly, there have been 175,800 new jobs created since the Work Choices legislation took effect in March. Far from the gloomy predictions of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten of the Australian Workers Union and Sharan Burrow, the President of the ACTU, that the new legislation was a charter for mass sackings and mass dismissals, we have in fact seen an extraordinary strength in the Australian labour market since March of this year.

The participation rate for August rose from 64.9 per cent to a record high of 65.1 per cent. The participation rate has been above 64 per cent in every month since January of last year, and only in two other months in the last 30 years has the participation rate been above 64 per cent, and that was in January and February of 2003. This record high participation rate is proof of the confidence Australians have in finding a job. More Australians than ever feel confident about looking for and finding the work of their choice. It is truly an employees’ market like never before.

In commenting on today’s figures, the Deutsche Bank economic commentary had this to say, inter alia, and I think it bears very heavily on debate in relation to the labour market in this country:

The rise in available labour is a clear trend and relates to a range of factors including an ‘encouraged worker effect’ and yes, some increased participation resulting from the recent Commonwealth Government reforms to industrial relations and welfare rules.

In other words, this economic commentary is saying that we now have a climate which is encouraging workers, and one of the explanations for that is the combined effect of the government’s industrial relations changes—you know, the ones that were going to throw millions out of work—and also the Welfare to Work rules. Which side of politics opposed both of those measures? In other words, the Australian Labor Party is against measures which, in the view of this economic commentary, have led to an encouraged worker effect.

May I say to the member for Braddon that in March of 1996 the unemployment rate in his state of Tasmania was 10.1 per cent and in August of 2006 it was six per cent. In the electorate of Braddon, in March of 1996 it was 10.9 per cent and in March of this year, and it may be lower now, it was 7.2 per cent. He and other Northern Tasmanians will know only too well that if the forest policies of the other side of politics had prevailed in October of 2004 then the unemployment rate in Braddon and other parts of Northern Tasmania would have been heading back to the stratospheric levels that they arrived at in March of 1996.