Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister and it follows the answer he has just given on the subject of collective agreements. I refer him specifically to his 21 April endorsement of the Australian Federal Police:

I want to compliment the Federal Police ... for the tremendous work they have done in the past and I’m sure they’ll go on doing in to the future.

I also refer to the following statement by the Australian Federal Police Association:

To date, the AFP has taken a responsible approach to the utilisation of AWAs, preferring to steer clear of these tenuous arrangements in favour of transparent, collective agreement making.

If collective bargaining is good enough for those who protect all of us, why isn’t it good enough for everyone else?

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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for asking me that question. I actually had a meeting with the leadership of the Australian Federal Police Association only a few weeks ago, and I can assure you of this, Mr Speaker: they were not complaining about our industrial relations policy. They were raising other matters—

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Beazley interjecting

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

Order! The Leader of the Opposition has asked his question.

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

I am very proud of the Australian Federal Police, and I am very proud of the additional financial support. It is very interesting; what the Leader of the Opposition has done is draw attention to the difference between our policy and his. Under our policy you can choose; under his policy you cannot. What he would do is deny—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Order! The level of interjections is far too high. The Prime Minister has the call.

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

Under our policy you have many choices. Under the Labor policy, what comes out at the end of the process is what will be dictated by the ACTU, and the Leader of the Opposition knows it. It was laid down in black and white at the National Press Club today.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister update the House on how the government’s workplace relations reform is benefiting Australian workers, including those in my electorate of Barker? Is the minister aware of proposals to re-regulate the Australian labour market, and how might these reduce wages and employment growth?

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

I thank the member for Barker for his question. I am delighted to inform him that these changes are benefiting the people of Barker, because in the June quarter the unemployment rate in Barker fell to 4.1 per cent. Indeed, I can advise the member for Barker and other honourable members that in March 1996 over 45 federal electorates in Australia had unemployment rates above 10 per cent. Almost one-third of the federal electorates in Australia in March 1996 had an unemployment rate above 10 per cent. The data for the electorates today show that there is no electorate in Australia today that has an unemployment rate above 10 per cent, and that is an example of the good reforms that have been put in place.

The electorate of Barker and all the other electorates around Australia are therefore benefiting from the strong economic management of this government. I am asked by the member for Barker about proposals to re-regulate, and every policy position that the ACTU imposes on this compliant Leader of the Opposition here is designed to do two things. They are designed, firstly, to restrict the ability of employers and employees to agree about the working arrangements that best suit their particular needs and conditions. And, secondly, they are designed to increase the unfettered powers of unions in Australian workplaces, even as union density in Australia continues to fall.

So we had the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, down at the Press Club this afternoon in what was generally a left-wing rant. He actually—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A socialist rant?

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

A socialist rant. I am being kind. But amongst this left-wing rant—amongst phrases disguised to hide true intentions, like ‘good faith bargaining’ and ‘workplace democracy’—what we know is that the Leader of the Opposition has been ordered by his union bosses to adopt union monopoly bargaining; a good faith bargaining which is really compulsory union bargaining.

People of Australia should understand what this actually means. When the rhetoric is stripped away, what this actually means is that unions will have an unqualified right to involve themselves in any workplace in Australia which they choose, regardless of whether or not that particular workplace has a union member. That is the purport of what was discussed by Mr Combet. In fact, employers will be forced by Labor to negotiate with the union regardless of whether or not the employees actually consent to this. Mr Combet made this absolutely clear today. He was asked a question by a journalist from the Financial Review about this particular article. What he did first of all was correct what Mr Beazley said on Friday and said, ‘No, that wasn’t actually what the Labor Party policy was.’ Then he stressed—and this is important—that you do not need a majority of employees to demand collective bargaining; that the union will simply be able to march in and demand union bargaining.

Secondly, he rejected the US model, which actually means you must have a majority. Further, in black-and-white terms, on page 18 in the document which the ACTU released today, it says:

A lack of majority employee support would not of itself be grounds for the Commission to refrain from making any good faith bargaining orders.

So what this means, and let us make no bones about this, is that whether or not you have got a union member in a workplace, and whether or not that union is otherwise represented in that workplace—as Mr Combet has pointed out in correcting the Leader of the Opposition, who last week did not even know the detail of the policy that has been forced upon him—the unions can walk into that place and demand compulsory collective bargaining. That is what their policy is about, and Mr Combet let the beans out today in relation to that.

We have seen over the last 10 years, as the Prime Minister indicated earlier, the lowest unemployment rates in 30 years. We have representatives of the tourism industry in Australia here today. They know from their experience that the reforms of the last 10 years have led to greater employment and greater business prosperity in this country. They are because of those reforms. And yet this weak Leader of the Opposition would rip up not only the most recent reforms; he would rip up the previous reforms and take us back where Mr Combet and the union movement want us, to the 1970s and the 1980s—to the days when the Leader of the Opposition presided over an unemployment rate of over 10 per cent and industrial disputation was 30 times what it is today. That would be economic vandalism.