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

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Brand proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s attack on wages and conditions at a time of rising interest rates.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

We have just witnessed one of the most addled and bombastic question times I have seen in a very long time from this government. It was an extraordinary set of performances from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, marked by complacency, hubris, pathological hatred of the opposition, dishonesty and deceit, massive defensiveness and a sense of entitlement across the frontbench that only they are possible, only they should be and that they need to answer for nothing.

In the course of it, as usual with this Prime Minister and his ministers, they erected a series of straw men, knocked them down and believed they had mounted a defence of their position. One of their favourite straw men was to suggest that when we debated the industrial relations legislation of last year, Labor Party speakers—me, in particular—got up and talked about the sky falling in, mass sackings and horrible things happening immediately. I remember very well the analogy I used for the operation of this act at that time, because it is the analogy I have used ever since—that is, the operation of this act in the industrial relations conditions of ordinary Australians would be like an infestation of termites, slowly crumbling away, and that has precisely been the experience.

Because this government is so deeply dishonest and so appallingly defensive, it is gradually shutting down points of criticism and analysis where embarrassment is likely to occur. We saw another example of it here today. We saw the Prime Minister mocking the member for Perth when the member for Perth stood up and gave a set of statistics from the OEA on their initial survey, last May, of the first set of AWAs under the new regime applying to AWAs, and the impact that those had on the rights and the awards of ordinary Australian workers. I am going to go through those statistics because this is now a very historical and important document. This is the last time we will see the truth. It is the last time the Australian people will have an understanding of this—at least for 12 months. When we get into office of course we will reveal all.

The OEA discovered then, from their sampling of the AWAs to that point, these things: 100 per cent of them excluded at least one protected award condition; 64 per cent of them removed leave loadings; 63 per cent removed penalty rates; 52 per cent removed shift work loadings; 41 did not contain gazetted public holidays; 31 per cent modified overtime loadings; 29 per cent modified rest breaks; 27 per cent modified public holiday payments; 22 per cent did not provide for a pay increase over the life of the agreement; and 16 per cent excluded all award conditions and replaced them with the government’s legislated minimum standards. That was the last time the Australian people had a window on the truth, because those AWAs, as we know, once signed by the businessman concerned and the person who receives them, become secret documents, not to be penetrated by anyone else on pain of a massive penalty and an offence. We saw then, for the last time, the truth of what the government’s legislation was producing for ordinary Australians.

When we went back at Senate estimates to see these figures updated—and remember there are many thousands of AWAs which have come into place since then—we found that these figures are no longer being collected. This is pure eastern European circa 1950s Stalinism—pure Stalinism; that’s all there is to it—in which information is simply shut down because the truth is inconvenient. The truth goes to the heart of the malevolence of this minister—inoffensive though he is, largely, as a human being—and the Prime Minister, deeply offensive though he is, when he was still of a mind to do things in other than a totally addled way.

We now have a circumstance where the government cannot be trusted with the basic living conditions of ordinary Australian families, and that is the subject of our MPI today. This government has massively breached trust. This government has turned against Middle Australia. On the industrial relations front, the government said nothing in the last election campaign about what it intended to do, but it has introduced a system that will enable it to slash wages, smash awards, scrap penalty rates, scrap overtime, scrap shift allowances and scrap redundancy pay. This minister has put in place an infestation—a cancer—in the industrial relations system, which will fatally undermine, over time, the conditions of ordinary Australian workers and therefore of ordinary Australian families, none of it announced during the last election campaign.

That, of course, is not the only piece of deceit that we are dealing with in this MPI. The second piece of deceit—which also goes to the heart of the living conditions of Middle Australian families and the effectiveness of their pay packets in supporting their aspirations in life—is that statement made by our political opponents that they would keep interest rates at historical lows. There have been three interest rate increases since then.

The problem with this government is that it simply does not comprehend the new interest rate reality. It simply does not understand that there is no such thing as a small mortgage anymore, so there is no such thing as a small interest rate rise. It needs to be understood, absolutely, that families of Middle Australia are paying more for their mortgages under John Howard than they ever were under any of his predecessors, and that includes Paul Keating. They are paying more for their mortgages.

The Prime Minister gets up here in this chamber and he thinks he has a defence in talking about 17 per cent versus eight per cent or whatever. The simple fact of the matter is this: the interest rates now being paid by Australians take a higher percentage of their income than was ever the case while Paul Keating was in office. The Prime Minister conveniently forgets one other piece of history, and that is that when he was last Treasurer interest rates rose to 22 per cent and had to be dealt with, in that particular instance, by small business.

The simple fact of the matter is that, as a result of these interest rate rises, families are having to close down their activities very quickly indeed. Interest rate rises will affect the family holiday at the beach. They will affect the kids’ sport. For those who are heavily mortgaged—and many have been encouraged to be heavily mortgaged by this government—this is going to be a lean Christmas.

The member for Wentworth has suggested what I have just had to say is overdramatisation. The members for Hughes and Herbert say the rise is unimportant to their constituents. We all know that the Treasurer has said that he will not be concerned because he thinks that any rate below 10 per cent is low. Young families in our capital cities find themselves these days burdened with payments on mortgages of upwards of $300,000 and they find also that household debt has ballooned to 150 per cent of household disposable income. What we are watching here is a picture of aspirational Australia trying to get on top of what they need to do now to pay for the school fees, trying to get on top of what they need to do now to pay for childcare fees, trying to get on top of what they need to do now to pay for health benefits and trying to get their families into a situation where they can have a decent roof over their heads that gives their family a capacity to grow.

The consequence of all of that is that they have borrowed to the eyeballs, and many of them may have made that calculation over the last five years. Many of them have made that calculation on the basis of what they have heard from the propaganda of the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister when they have said things like, ‘We will keep interest rates at historical lows,’ when they have said things like, ‘Keep re-electing us and you’ll be able to do these things,’ or when they have listened to the Liberal Party propagandists urging them to take up things like private health insurance and the opportunity to send their kids to private schools.

When they have listened to the Liberals and to John Howard, they have listened with belief. They have believed that John Howard would never turn against them, that John Howard had their interests in mind, and now they have discovered the ideological John Howard. Now they have discovered the Howard of the big end of town. Now they have discovered, after 10 years in office and a tonne of hubris on the part of this Prime Minister, what he really means to them, and what he really means to them is growing hardship.

The Prime Minister compounded all of this a week ago when he went into the radio station to send the clearest possible signal to the Reserve Bank. The Prime Minister does not do anything without calculation. He particularly does not go on at great length in an interview about interest rates unless he means a message to get out. What the Prime Minister said to the Reserve Bank was this: ‘Raise the rates. A stitch in time saves nine. Raise the rates. You have the Prime Minister’s clearance. Get out there and do it. We want the rate raised before Christmas’—in the hope, of course, that a rate rise will not be necessary next year. What was he worried about here? What he was worried about here was simply this.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Survival.

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

He is about political survival. He is about—hopefully, from his point of view—creating a set of conditions where Australians will not be reminded again of his broken promise next year, short of the election. The only people who do not matter in this are the Australian people. The only people who do not matter in this are the people paying the mortgages.

Did we see the Prime Minister stand up and say, ‘We have the second highest interest rates in the industrialised world, Reserve Bank—don’t act any further’? Did we hear the Prime Minister stand up and say, as the Treasurer has been saying, ‘We’re going backwards in growth terms’? He says that is because of the drought, but he also now appears to think it is because Australians are saving more. Did we hear any of that constraint from the Prime Minister? No, no. We heard the Prime Minister’s pure political calculation: ‘Raise them now, fellas. Raise them now. Get this monkey off my back before Christmas. Do it under the cover of the Melbourne Cup but get on with it.’ ‘Slug them,’ is what the Prime Minister said to the Reserve Bank. So we have this one-two punch now in operation—a whack from the Prime Minister with a clear signal to the Reserve Bank: ‘Don’t worry about my promises and undertakings on historical lows. Rack them up and make sure things are okay politically next year. And then there is the second punch, which we’ll also conceal.’ This will be a rabbit-killer from behind, and that is what happens with the industrial relations laws.

If this government were honestly proud of what it was doing in the industrial relations laws, if it believed that these AWAs were about bringing conditions up as opposed to putting them down, it would be proud of the statistics that it could produce. There is only one reason to conceal these AWAs, and it is not the truth. The reason to conceal these AWAs is to protect the political position of the government. We are going to fight this government right the way down to the line to the next election. The Australian people understand this is no longer the government of Middle Australia; this is a government of deceit and for the big end of town. It is the Labor Party now that stands for Middle Australia, the Labor Party with their future our concern. (Time expired)

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

When I hear the Leader of the Opposition I am reminded of that television show The Weakest Link, because the reality is that that is what we have in the Leader of the Opposition. It is interesting this afternoon that he comes in here and wants to pretend that things which he said in the past year about industrial relations changes he did not say. He said today at the outset of his speech: ‘I didn’t say that the sky would fall in. I didn’t say there would be mass sackings.’

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He didn’t.

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

Let me take you to a few quotes. I am interested that the member opposite says he did not say that. Let’s actually see what the Leader of the Opposition did say. In relation to productivity growth:

… there is no productivity agenda here.

National Press Club, 1 February this year. Or:

This will hurt the economy.

Kim Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, on ABC’s PM program just on 10 October last year. On industrial disputation he said in a speech to the Tasmanian ALP state conference on 6 August 2005:

These extreme changes risk dragging us back into an era of heightened industrial conflict.

Let’s turn to wages growth. Again, let me quote what the Leader of the Opposition said. This was at a press conference on 10 October 2005:

This is about slashing wages; make absolutely no doubt about that.

On 28 March of this year, the member for Perth—I will come to him in a moment—said that the minimum wage would go down. On the issue of jobs, we have the Leader of the Opposition reported on the AAP news wire service on 23 October 2005 as saying that these changes would not lead to the employment of more Australians, yet he comes in here today and says, ‘I didn’t say that the sky would fall in. I didn’t say that there would be mass sackings.’ The reality is that when you go back through the record—and we keep records about the Leader of the Opposition—to what he has said in the past, what he said to the Australian people and to the workers of this country and their families was that these changes would lead, in effect, to the sky falling in so far as their economic future was concerned.

He even says today, ‘What I was saying was that this would lead to a slow crumbling away of your conditions.’ Let us even accept that for a moment and take the charges as they were made against Work Choices by the opposition. The first charge was in relation to jobs. As I said, the Leader of the Opposition was quoted as saying that these changes would not lead to the employment of more Australians. Let me take a few other statements that were made by representatives of the labour movement in Australia. Mr Greg Combet, the secretary of the ACTU, said on the John Laws show on 2UE radio on 27 March of this year:

Laws: You don’t agree that these changes would provide any sort of job growth?

Combet: Oh I can’t see it.

What about Bill Shorten, famously quoted—perhaps infamously, some would think now—in Workplace Express on 26 May 2005:

Make no mistake: today is green light for mass sackings.

Here is Mr Shorten, a celebrated union official in Australia, saying that the Work Choices package would be a green light for mass sackings in Australia. What has happened? Again we hear the Leader of the Opposition saying that this is a major insult to Middle Australia. That is what he said today. Let us have a look at Middle Australia in terms of jobs growth since Work Choices came into operation on 27 March: 205,000 jobs have been created in Australia in the months of April through to September of this year. Let me put this in historic context: the average jobs growth in Australia for the months of April through to September for the past 20 years has been about 75,000 jobs.

At a time when Mr Beazley and the union movement were saying that this would lead to a reduction in jobs in Australia, we have seen almost three times the average number of jobs created in Australia in the last six months. We see that reflected in the unemployment rates. We have a 30-year low unemployment rate in Australia of 4.9 per cent, having falling to 4.8 per cent, and the highest participation rate—that is, the highest number of Australians confident to go out there and seek a job—that we have had in Australian history. The first charge that the Leader of the Opposition made against Work Choices was that it would slash jobs—even though he wants to run away from it today because the inconvenient truth is that this has led to greater economic conditions for Australians—and that has been proven to be totally and absolutely wrong.

Let me go to the second core criticism that was made of Work Choices: it would slash wages. The Leader of the Opposition said at his press conference on 10 October of last year:

This is about slashing wages; make absolutely no doubt about that.

Surely that was saying that the sky was going to fall in for workers in Australia. I remind the member for Perth, who is no doubt following me in this debate, of what his media release from March of this year said:

... the Minimum Wage will not rise in real terms under the Australian Fair Pay Commission.

What have we seen? Let us look at the empirical data—not the claims that I am making, not the claims that the opposition is making—about what has happened since Work Choices came into operation. The Australian Bureau of Statistics labour price index shows that total rates of pay, excluding bonuses, increased by 1.1 per cent in the June quarter of 2006 and by 4.1 per cent over the year to the June quarter. Here we have the ABS data—the official collection of data in this country—showing that wages, on an annualised basis, are increasing by 4.1 per cent. If you look at the data relating to collective agreements in Australia, what it shows is that collective agreements have wage increases built into them, usually in the area of four to 4½ per cent. It is hardly a slashing or dragging down of wages in Australia.

As the Prime Minister pointed out in question time today, real wages for Australians over the past 10 years have increased by 16.4 per cent. Let us compare that to the previous 13 years of Labor government, including the time when the Leader of the Opposition was last coresponsible for the economy of Australia as the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Employment, Education and Training. What happened to real wages when Mr Beazley was last in charge of the economy in Australia? Real wages went backwards over 13 years by 0.2 per cent. In 13 years of Labor government, real wages go down. In 10 years of a coalition government, real wages have gone up by 16.4 per cent. I ask Middle Australia: which outcome would you prefer? The Leader of the Opposition says today that this is some assault on Middle Australia. The reality is that this has been to the advantage of Australians. On top of that, we had the recent decision of the Australian Fair Pay Commission.

Had you stopped to listen—if you were not one of those Australians that had given up listening to what the member for Perth and the Leader of the Opposition have been saying about these things because they have been caught out so many times misleading in their comments about industrial relations—over the last few weeks and months to the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party, their clear and simple message about the Australian Fair Pay Commission was that it would drive down wages in Australia. What did we have last week? The Australian Fair Pay Commission came out and awarded a $27.36 increase—

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How much?

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

a $27.36 increase in wages not just for those on the federal minimum wage but also for those earning up to $700 a week. In other words, about one million of the lowest paid award-reliant Australians are getting a $27.36 increase in their wages as a result of the Fair Pay Commission, and for about another 250,000 Australians who are award-reliant and earning more than $700 a week—remembering that these days most people are not award-reliant; they are on agreements because they are better off—there was a $22 increase in their wages as well. Is this the driving down, the slashing or the green light for wages going backwards in Australia? Hardly. Once again, wages have been going up. So the second charge, the second core criticism that is made of Work Choices, namely that it would drive down wages for Australians, has also been proven wrong.

Let us go to the third criticism that has been made over the past few months about the Work Choices legislation: that it would lead to heightened industrial disputation in Australia. Again, let me quote, so that nobody thinks I am making this up or putting words into the mouths of those opposite in the Labor movement. The Leader of the Opposition told the ALP state conference in Tasmania:

These extreme changes risk dragging us back into an era of heightened industrial conflict.

Or Senator George Campbell, on AAP:

... the sort of relationship that’s now been established in the workplace is going to encourage that sabotage to take place ...

Let us look again at empirical data produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in relation to what has happened to industrial disputation, strikes and the like in Australia. The June quarter of 2006 revealed that there were just 3.1 working days lost per 1,000 employees, which is the lowest quarterly rate of disputes ever recorded in this country by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Let me put this in context. If you go back to when the Leader of the Opposition was the minister for employment in Australia in the early nineties—although some of us think he was the minister for unemployment at that time—there were 104.6 working days lost per 1,000 in December 1992. We are comparing 104 working days lost per 1,000 employees with just 3.1 working days lost per 1,000 employees in the latest data from the ABS. And yet the claim was made that this would lead to greater industrial disputation and a dog-eat-dog environment in Australia. The opposite has occurred as a result of the workplace changes that we have put in place, not just recently but going back to 1996 as well. So on the third criticism, that there would be greater industrial disputation—not on my say so or on my colleagues’ say so but on the data produced officially for us, as it is year after year, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—the data shows that, once again, the criticisms made by the Leader of the Opposition and those around him have simply been wrong.

The Leader of the Opposition has also criticised Work Choices on productivity growth. He said to the National Press Club on 1 February this year: ‘There is no productivity agenda here.’ He said on PM, on ABC Radio: ‘This will hurt the economy.’ Let us again look at the data. Don’t believe me; look at the ABS data that has been produced. Figures released yesterday show that labour productivity grew by 2.2 per cent this financial year. So labour productivity is growing in this financial year under these changes that have been put in place. And there is other data beyond that. When you strip away all the frenzied rhetoric that comes from the Leader of the Opposition and go to the core criticisms of Work Choices, the reality is that they have been proved wrong.

Take retrenchments, for example. The latest data on retrenchments shows that the number of retrenchments is 58 per cent lower compared with when the Leader of the Opposition was the minister for employment in the Hawke-Keating-Beazley Labor government back in the early 1990s. So, whether we are talking about jobs growth, wages growth, industrial disputation, productivity growth, retrenchments in the economy or the unemployment rate—six critical measures of the Australian economy—on each of these measures the claims that were made by the opposition in relation to these matters have been proved to be absolutely wrong. Yet we had the Leader of the Opposition come in here today and say that this is an assault on Middle Australia. This could only come from somebody who said in the early 1990s that he had given up on the unemployed in this country. He said words to the effect that the employment portfolio, which he then had, was the one that he had the least interest in of all the portfolios that he had had.

One thing that you never hear about from the opposition is job creation. You never hear about how we grow the economy in this country. It is economic growth that creates jobs in this country. It is the ability of people to get out and have a go, which is what this is all about. People want to be able to get out, have a go and be rewarded for having a go. Yet what the Labor Party would do with their radical re-regulation of the workforce in Australia would take away those incentives from ordinary Australians.

Ordinary Australians know, on the basis of their experience, what has happened as a result of this government’s policy. There is a great disconnect between what the Leader of the Opposition rants on about in this place each day and what ordinary Australians know. We will continue to make the changes necessary to make the reforms, because they are about the future of this country. We are about the future of this country. We are about the national interest. Regrettably, the Labor Party is still about the vested interests of its union bosses.

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This MPI is very straightforward: it is cost of living up, take-home pay down. In question time the Prime Minister was questioned about seven consecutive interest rate increases. His response to that was to say that the economy is magnificent. The magnificent seven interest rate increases! That is the Prime Minister’s message to working Australian families. That is the Prime Minister’s message to Middle Australia.

We have inflation up, interest rates up and the grave danger that the Reserve Bank next week will increase interest rates on the eighth consecutive occasion. Why does the Reserve Bank say there is upward pressure on inflation and interest rates? Because of the government’s complacency on skills and infrastructure. Its complacency on skills is putting upward pressure in the wages area where there are skills shortages and its complacency on infrastructure is causing capacity constraints. So to those Australians working hard, battling to make ends meet, trying to pay their mortgages, trying to pay the cost of putting food on the kitchen table and trying to pay for their childcare, the Prime Minister is saying: ‘Next week, Melbourne Cup day, when the Reserve Bank meets—seven magnificent interest rates increases.’

When it comes to the capacity of working Australians to meet that cost and that burden, the government’s approach is to say, ‘We’re going to attack your take-home pay, we’re going to attack your penalty rates, we’re going to attack your overtime payment, we’re going to attack your leave loading and we’re going to attack your shift allowance.’ How do we know that is the government’s approach to take-home pay? Because at Senate estimates at 9.20 today we saw a red-hot scandal, a red-hot cover-up. At 9.20 today the government refused to allow the Senate, the parliament and the Australian people to have the evidence—the government’s own empirical data, the government’s own statistics—about the government’s attack on take-home pay.

This was put to the Prime Minister during question time today. The first time we put this to the Prime Minister it was put in a different context. We get used to the Prime Minister being a serial misleader when it comes to industrial relations matters. Every time something is put to the Prime Minister he will blackguard whoever puts it to him. He will do anything, say anything, cover up anything and mislead on anything to try and avoid the adverse political, social and economic consequences of his extreme and unfair industrial relations legislation. In question time the member for Capricornia put to the Prime Minister something she had innocently found on the website of Brisbane law firm Connor Hunter. It said:

The Federal Government’s work Choices amendments offer you the opportunity to reduce your overheads significantly.

…         …         …

Employers can remove award conditions ... without compensating the employee at all. This affords employers the opportunity to reduce weekly pay through making cuts to penalty rates, overtime rates, leave loading, shift allowances and other forms of remunerating employees.

The member for Capricornia simply asked the Prime Minister, ‘They’re right, aren’t they?’ He would not answer the question and he went on like a blackguard. Why would he not answer the question? Because on 29 May the Office of the Employment Advocate provided to Senate estimates all the evidence, the empirical data, about how AWAs were impacting on the so-called protected conditions. Courtesy of Connor Hunter, other firms and our own analysis, we know that there is no protection. These conditions can be wiped out, for no compensation, at the stroke of a pen. In Senate estimates in May were we told that, between 27 March and 29 May—a period of a couple of months—100 per cent of AWAs excluded at least one of the protected award conditions of leave loadings, penalty rates and shiftwork allowances. We heard that 64 per cent removed leave loadings, 63 per cent removed penalty rates, 52 per cent remove shiftwork loadings, 41 per cent did not contain gazetted public holidays and 16 per cent excluded all of the protected award conditions.

No wonder the government did not want the up-to-date information out. The OEA could give it out on 29 May, but they cannot give it out today. Why is that? Because the government knows that the adverse implications which will flow from that empirical data being released will again throw a spotlight on their attack on the take-home pay of working Australians and their capacity to make ends meet through their penalty rates, their overtime, their leave loadings and their shift allowances.

The minister, in his contribution, said: ‘We keep records. The government keeps records. We keep a record of everything that the Leader of the Opposition says and we make it public.’ They also keep a record of what AWAs do, but they refuse to make it public. They engage in red-hot cover-ups—a scandal of the highest order.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where is the data?

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney has been warned!

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister also said it is important to look at the empirical data. You have the empirical data, you just refuse to release it at Senate estimates.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would have thought the member for Grayndler might have learnt something yesterday.

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have the empirical data but you refuse to release it because you know that it shows an attack upon the take-home pay of working Australians. In his contribution, the minister also referred to the minimum wage. When the Fair Pay Commission last week awarded $27 to Australia’s lowest paid employees, no-one was more surprised than John Howard and Kevin Andrews. No-one was more surprised than the government. And do you know why? Because if the government’s submissions to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission had been agreed to, on Thursday the minimum wage would have been $50 a week, or $2,600 a year, lower. If ACCI’s submissions—and I very much enjoyed their dinner last night—had been agreed to by the Industrial Relations Commission, the minimum wage would have been $95 a week, or $4,490 a year, lower.

Over the last decade, the government has continually been making submissions that seek to reduce the minimum wage. In its formal submission to the Fair Pay Commission less than three months ago, the government said:

For example, a 10 cents per hour increase in all minimum rates is estimated to reduce employment by 0.33 per cent or 32,800 jobs.

In other words, the government’s submission to the Fair Pay Commission was that, if you increase the minimum wage by $27, as the Fair Pay Commission did, you will increase unemployment by 236,000 jobs—because for decades the Prime Minister, the Liberal Party and the Howard government have been saying to the Industrial Relations Commission that if you increase the minimum wage you will automatically increase unemployment. No wonder we saw such an adverse reaction from the ACCI, which has also held that view.

The government’s response to the Fair Pay Commission decision was massively hypocritical. For a decade the government has been saying to the Industrial Relations Commission, ‘Reduce the minimum wage.’ If the government’s submissions had been agreed to, the minimum wage would be $2,600 a year lower. And do not let anyone be fooled as to the magnitude of this increase. The government uses the headline figure, but, over a 12-month period, in September 2006 dollars this is actually a 0.7 per cent increase in real terms in the minimum wage. It is less than that if you take the start-up point as being 1 December—which it is. In real terms it is half the average increase in the minimum wage over the last five years and the equal second lowest increase in a decade. That is the real increase in the minimum wage over the last 11 years. The increase we saw last week—0.7 per cent in real terms—was the equal second lowest in a decade and the lowest in five years.

This government is engaged in an attack upon the take-home pay of working Australians that is primarily focused on penalty rates, leave loadings and shift allowances—all the take-home pay components that working Australian families have relied upon for so long to make ends meet. The government, having been sprung on that when it released the empirical data in May, is now engaged in a red-hot scandal and cover-up today.

The Prime Minister is a serial misleader when it comes to industrial relations matters. He told the Australian public, at the Liberal Party’s launch of its industrial relations policy in 2004 at the last election, that he would make no changes to these so-called ‘allowable matters’—no changes to the things that he now refuses to release information about. Do you know why? Because he has got his magnificent seven interest rate increases, with penalty rates, leave loadings, shift allowances, take-home pay components and public holiday penalty rates all down. That is the Howard government’s and the Liberal Party’s formula for working Australians: cost of living up, take-home pay down—and they will cover up anything to avoid that conclusion being drawn. They will do anything, say anything, mislead on anything and cover up anything to avoid that conclusion being drawn, but that conclusion will be made by the Australian public at the next election. (Time expired)

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth and all their fellow travellers on the other side of the chamber are again engaging in the absurdity and farce that they are fast becoming famous for: making wild claims and broad generalisations. But as always there is nothing of substance. The inconvenient truth for the Leader of the Opposition is the fact that real wage increases have taken place since this government came into power 10 years ago and since the start of Work Choices on 27 March this year.

The inconvenient truth is the 205,000 jobs that have been created since March. For the same comparable period for the last 20 years an average of 79,000 jobs have been created. So we have seen a real increase in jobs: 205,000, compared to an average of 79,000 over the same period of time for the last 20 years, and 184,000 of these have been full-time jobs. The inconvenient truth is that the participation rate in this country is 64 per cent. There are more people in jobs and there are more jobs available for people who are seeking work. The inconvenient truth for the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth is that unemployment is at a record low and industrial disputation is low. The inconvenient truth for the member for Perth and the Leader of the Opposition is that we have seen the Fair Pay Commission, the very commission that they derided and want to abolish, come down last week with a wage increase of $27 per week. How can this possibly be construed as an attack on wages and conditions? It shows how out of touch the ALP is with working Australians. In a moment I will contrast the record of the government with that of the member for Brand, but firstly there are a few things that need to be said.

This opposition has now started a new fear campaign. The Leader of the Opposition, in his contribution to this MPI debate, started a new fear campaign. Not content with saying that there is going to be mass unrest and disputation, not content with saying that this is going to be a race to the bottom in terms of wages and not content with saying that marriages are going to break up because of Work Choices, he is now saying that people’s summer holidays are going to be affected; people will not be able to go on their summer holiday. I tell you what: if the Leader of the Opposition’s claim has any validity, when I drive down to the Mornington Peninsula this summer, in January, with my children, I will expect to see the beaches vacant. I will expect to see a mass of beaches available to me to enjoy my time with my children. Of course that will not happen, because once again the Leader of the Opposition is going into a fear campaign.

He says that people will not be able to afford their mortgages because of interest rate hikes and because of the attack by this government. Mr Deputy Speaker, I will tell you what the people of Australia can afford: they can afford to take out a mortgage and pay it off. Why can they do that?  Because there are 1.9 times as many Australians in jobs under this government than under the previous government. We have seen more jobs created. People are able to have a job, go to the bank and take out a loan if that is what they desire.

In fact, on our visit to Queensland last week, the Hon. Joe Hockey, the Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations, and I went to a business that negotiated AWAs and collective agreements, a combination of the two, and we actually had the blue-collar employees—diesel mechanics, fitters and tradies—say to us, ‘We have all moved from casual to full time without losing any of our conditions. What this means is we can now go to the bank and ask for a loan.’ These are real Australians who have had their conditions improved because of changes in the industrial relations setting that have enabled them to negotiate better conditions and move from casual to full time. What we have also seen on some our these visits is that the workers, despite a union campaign in some of the workplaces, have refused to join a union. We had one classic case where not one single member of an organisation had decided to take up union membership, despite the fact that a union was picketing that employer’s premises, trying to fight a case. It failed of course.

So we have a new fear campaign. We can add that to the absurdity of what the Leader of the Opposition is on about. The Leader of the Opposition has in fact breached the trust of the Australian public. He says the Prime Minister has breached its trust. Mr Deputy Speaker, let me tell you this: the Leader of the Opposition has done that. He has failed to engage with the Australian public in an honest and open way. The Leader of the Opposition is not able to make one industrial relations policy announcement without running it past the unions—past the ACTU, which determines what is to be the case. He has said he is going to rip up AWAs. These have delivered real improvements in wages and conditions to a lot of the workers that we have met on our travels. He has failed to enunciate industrial relations policy without the consent of the ACTU. In fact, I note that the word ‘accord’ is starting to creep into some newspaper reports. And we all know what took place during the Hawke-Keating era and we all know about the high level of interest rates—17 per cent—and also about the unemployment level of 12 per cent. He has failed to acknowledge the real benefits that have flowed to a lot of low-income earners in Australia through the Fair Pay Commission’s decision last week.

He has also decided he is going to reintroduce good faith bargaining. Good faith bargaining is a nice term. It has a nice, flowery little image that this is all going to be hunky-dory and we are all going to get on well with each other. What good faith bargaining means is that the unions will have access to your workplace whether one of your employees is a member of the union or all of them are. It means access by the union to the workplace and it means access to the financial records of the organisation. Eventually this so-called good faith bargaining and access to all negotiations that take place will flow through to what is called ‘pattern bargaining’. That means that an employer’s individual circumstances and situation will no longer be taken into account because they will be roped in like everybody else. They will be roped into providing the conditions and wages of every other company in the same industry, regardless of the circumstances at that particular location—regardless of whether it is a location that requires seasonal work and regardless of other circumstances which differentiate it from other organisations.

The Leader of the Opposition has also failed to acknowledge the role that the Office of Workplace Services has provided and the protection that it has given to a lot of Australian workers. Since 1997 the OWS has won back over $43 million in unpaid wages for all Australians. Since 27 March this year it has recovered over $5 million for over 3,000 Australian workers. Where it is required, 193 inspectors and officials across 26 locations are out there fighting for these conditions on behalf of employees, and they are also able to initiate prosecutions. The ALP want to abolish this. Why do they want to do that? Do they want to abolish it because the OWS is not doing its job? Are they going to abolish it because it is not recovering unpaid wages? Are they going to abolish it because it is not initiating prosecutions if employment laws are broken? No, they do not want to abolish it for any of those reasons; they want to abolish it because they realise the OWS has filled the gap which the unions believe they should be occupying.

This campaign is all about the union movement’s survival. If members on the other side believe that I am making that up, I only have to recall a conversation last week with an ACTU official who said, ‘We are fighting for our survival.’ He did not say, ‘We are fighting for workers,’ or, ‘We are fighting for workers conditions,’ or, ‘We are fighting for jobs.’ He said, ‘We are fighting for our survival’—the survival of the union movement. It has absolutely nothing to do with the workers and it has nothing to do with creating jobs. In fact, you never hear the words ‘job creation’ come out of the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition; it is all about the union movement and its position. The campaign by the union movement, Your Rights at Work, is a sham and I look forward to making further contributions on it. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is concluded.