Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister inform the House of the success of the government’s industrial relations policies in regional areas, particularly in my electorate of Hume? How has this recent news been received in the community?

Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hume for his question and particularly his interest in this matter and his representation of the working families in his area. He would be well aware that under our workplace reforms we have seen unemployment in Australia drop to 4.8 per cent across the nation. In historical levels, it has not been in this area for over 30 years. The member for Hume would also be aware that unemployment across his electorate averaged 3.9 per cent, which is a great achievement in a regional part of New South Wales. So there is a 4.8 per cent average across the nation and 3.9 per cent in the electorate of Hume. We should recall that it was 5.9 per cent in 1996, so it has come down two per cent in the life of the coalition government in the electorate of Hume.

The small area labour market figures show that over 60 per cent of regions recorded a fall in their unemployment rate over the past 12 months, and 60 per cent of areas have unemployment rates of less than five per cent. So regional Australia is sharing in the benefits of the changes and reforms that we have introduced across Australia that have seen levels of unemployment drop dramatically in those labour markets. It is very important that regional Australia continues to share in the prosperity of the nation. Since Work Choices was introduced in March of this year there have been 205,000 new jobs created in the Australian economy, many of those in regional Australia and many of them in the member for Hume’s electorate. We should recognise that.

Many regional Australians welcomed last week’s decision by the Australian Fair Pay Commission to award a $27 a week pay rise to low-paid workers. On average, a lot of the workforce and working families in regional Australia are on those basic wages and they will receive this benefit on 1 December this year. They welcome it. They also welcome the fact that it has proven the lie of the Labor Party’s fearmongering over Work Choices and the fearmongering that they have put out there that the establishment of the Fair Pay Commission would not deliver for workers. It has.

AWU boss, Bill Shorten, who aspires to sit in the seat over here occupied by the current Leader of the Opposition, could not bring himself to acknowledge that it was a good outcome. He said:

... it is wrong if they only get an extra payment because a Federal Election will be held in 12 months.

It has got nothing to do with a federal election. Ian Harper and the Fair Pay Commission brought this ruling down because they believe these workers deserve that rise; they do and they have been rewarded for that.

We know all about the union movement’s comments in support of the Labor Party’s campaign to try and win office next year. Greg Combet said that the unions used to run Australia and it would be a good thing if they did that again. Then there was that famous comment of ACTU President Sharan Burrow, when Work Choices was first announced. She said:

I need a mum or dad of someone who’s been seriously injured or killed. That would be fantastic.

That is what Sharan Burrow had to say. We know what Greg Combet had to say. We have just seen what Bill Shorten has had to say. These are the people that control the Labor Party and want to put Australia back in the hands of the union movement.