Stewart McArthur (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister update the House on the state of Australia’s labour market? How have recent reforms affected the labour market and are there any alternative policies?

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

I thank the member for Corangamite for that very important question. Can I start my answer by updating him on the state of the labour market in Corangamite. In March of 1996 the unemployment rate in Corangamite was 8.6 per cent. It is now 4.7 per cent. I know the work of the member over that 10-year period has played a major role in that fall.

I can say generally in reply to the member that yesterday the quarterly Manpower survey of employment intentions was released and it showed the biggest increase in intention to employ since the survey began. Last week the Westpac-ACCI survey of industrial trends reported the strongest increase since December 2004 on employment growth. These two reports are consistent with the ABS statistics, which show unemployment at the lowest levels since the 1970s, the participation rate rising to a record high and over 175,000 new jobs created since Work Choices began, with 85 per cent of those new jobs being full-time jobs.

We all remember the predictions made by the Labor Party and the unions. We all remember they said there would be mass sackings. There have not; there have been mass hirings. They said that there would be an increase in industrial disputes; they are now at a record low. They said wages would be cut; wages continue to rise in real terms. On every score, the predictions made by the Labor Party and the union movement about Work Choices have been demonstrated to be wrong. Work Choices has not brought about the Armageddon that was predicted by the Australian Labor Party.

But it is worse than that. I am asked about alternative policies. They have some alternative policies. The alternative policies would bring back the job-destroying unfair dismissal laws. The alternative policies would wrench the secondary boycott protections out of the Trade Practices Act and return them to the Industrial Relations Commission, where they would be a completely useless sanction. On top of that, the Labor Party would embrace a form of so-called collective bargaining which would give an open permit to the unions of this country to enter any workplace they wanted to, and, if more than 50 per cent of the workers in that workplace voted for a collective agreement, they would deny the freedom of choice of the remaining 49 per cent and the employer to have individual contracts.

That is the sort of policy that would take us back to the bad old days when we had one million Australians out of work. We do not want to go back; we want to go forward. The prosperity of today is the product of the reforms of yesterday, and tomorrow’s prosperity can only be purchased with today’s reform. The Labor Party stand against reform. They stand in favour of taking the Australian economy back to the years when more than one million Australians were out of work.