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 impact of the Government’s attack on the wages and conditions of Australian workers.

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

I was privileged this morning to attend a great statement of Australian democracy. It was refreshing to be able to stand with 50,000 to 60,000 of my fellow Australians against what the government is doing to ordinary Australian families. It was refreshing to see ordinary Australians standing up for their democratic rights, determined to protect and advance the interests and concerns of their families in the face of an indifferent government that over the last 10 years in office has gradually turned its back on the middle Australians whom it claims to represent.

It comes as a little bit of a surprise, but not too much of a surprise, when I come back to Canberra, to notice members of this tricky Howard government, who, with the exception of course of the Prime Minister, never venture outside this city ot their own capital cities, deliberately understating the crowds around the nation protesting against these extreme IR laws. These protests were taking place at some 300 sites.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Downer interjecting

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

The Minister for Foreign Affairs should remember there is a blanket warning.

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

It is just another dose of their usual born-to-rule, arrogant self-delusion. They hope against hope that the families of Middle Australia will forget about these wage-slashing laws by the next election. It did get me thinking, though, about how many people the Howard government would attract to a ‘Support Work Choices’ rally. I do not think that they would be hiring out the MCG. I do not think they would be ringing Telstra Stadium, in Sydney; the Gabba; the WACA; the Adelaide Oval; or the Rooty Hill RSL. I do not think they would be ringing any of those places.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

The member for Rankin will remove himself.

The member for Rankin then left the chamber.

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

When I search through the list of venues around this country which might be suitable for an event such as the Support Work Choices rally, none of these great stadiums springs immediately to mind. Maybe the rec room at the Marble Bar caravan park, which holds about 50 people, would do. I can see it now: there would be the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, with a monkey suit on and not a hair out of place, standing in the kitchen, cutting up the cheese cubes and the cabana; the Prime Minister at the trestle table, setting up the plastic cups and the cask chardonnay—no Barnesy and Working Class Man but perhaps Peter Hendy on the karaoke machine, belting out Puttin’ on the Ritz. As the second hand ticks away on the clock on the wall, nobody comes through the front doors; Howard, Andrews and Hendy look on expectantly, pensively.

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

The Leader of the Opposition will address people by their titles.

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

Their furrowed brows light up as they see the front door swing on its hinges, but it is just another blast of hot wind blowing through Marble Bar. Second after second, minute after minute, their hope turns to sadness, and the Prime Minister shuffles back to the trestle table and starts stacking the plastic cups, the workplace relations minister puts the gladwrap on the cheese and cabana and Hendy packs away the microphone and wheels the karaoke machine back into the storeroom—forlorn, sad men all on their own, but confident in the knowledge that they are there in company with everybody who agrees with them on their workplace relations legislation.

The simple fact of the matter is that the minister can, as he likes, and as he does along with his Prime Minister in this place, speak about their legislation from the point of view of their political propaganda and the argument they want to make. They can get up in this place and rant and rave. They may be confident that the bitter experiences that many Australians are having are not necessarily felt by those who are sitting in observation of them around this chamber and around some parts of this town. They may be confident about that, but the simple fact is, Mr Minister and Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are now thousands of Australians who understand exactly what those AWAs mean. They understand exactly that there is no truth in the sort of defence mounted here by the Prime Minister and the minister.

For example, the other day they got up to talk about the Commonwealth Bank AWA and said, ‘These workers have a choice. They can choose between their collective agreement and their AWA.’ The propaganda point, for those who are ignorant, is of course the assumption that the choice is between apples and apples—that is, dealing with the same issues. In fact the choice is of an agreement now five years out of date—which in the normal course of events, when we had a fair industrial relations system, would be open for renegotiation now—that is, to stick with the position you had in 2002 or to choose what is now being presented in this AWA, which rips away every one of your hard-fought benefits which makes family life doable.

This is the experience of Australians who know and understand that this government is not telling them the truth. The reason they know and understand is not that they make a detailed study of this issue, not that they go to the government’s website and make a sound judgement after they have balanced that with what might be said on the ACTU website; it is that they live it and experience it. It is their day-to-day lives that are affected. It is they who have to handle the consequences of the loss of penalty rates. It is they who have to make the economic calculations in relation to their ability to pay their mortgages. It is they, as they see their kids go out and pick up their first job and find themselves confronted with extraordinary hours in relation to their AWAs, who have to wonder whether their 16- or 17-year-old girl is going to get home safely, because she has no alternative other than to take up that job if she wants to get a start in life. They have to worry about the safety of their children. They have to worry about the financial viability of their families.

They can hear all the blah that the Prime Minister wants to deliver and all the blah his minister wants to deliver about this or that really being better, but they know and understand exactly why these clever people opposite can never give a straight answer to the question asked on this side of the House: can you guarantee that these AWAs do not make people worse off? Day in, day out—no guarantee. There is plenty of mockery, plenty of flicking around of newspaper articles and plenty of blowhardery, but no guarantee. It does not matter what insults are delivered to people on this side of the House, we will deal with them during the course of the next election campaign. It is turning their back on Middle Australian families, something that the Australian people never expected from this Prime Minister, which has surprised and hurt so many and is causing so many of them to regret the vote they gave the Prime Minister.

This booklet is the Howard government policy on industrial relations from the 2004 election. It is not a short policy. It goes on at some considerable length—in fact it is something like 19 pages, which in the course of getting across a particular point of view to the Australian public is as comprehensive as you are ever likely to get. In this policy there is not a word that indicates what the government intended to do about penalty rates, and there is not a word about the removal of the no disadvantage clause from the AWAs that existed then. There is not a word about the hours arrangements which have been made possible in relation to the laws that this government has put in place. There is not a word in this document about the point at which unfair dismissals and the removal of rights associated with them cut in.

There is not a word in that document about weakening the powers in the hands of the industrial umpire in relation to the IRC. There is not a word in that document that says that, in that multiplicity of industrial agreements, the provisions relating to safety training for workers happen to have some degree of connection with union based safety training arrangements—which, in fact, happen to be most of the safety training arrangements in this country. There is not a word about the fact that, if they were incorporated within an agreement, a fine would result for both the union and the employer. There is nothing of that in that document. The Australian people were profoundly misled on something that was going to have a massive effect on their position.

The Prime Minister said that he would govern for all Australians and not simply for his mates. The Prime Minister misled the Australian people profoundly on that, and they are beginning to understand that. Not only were there 50,000 to 60,000 people at the MCG today but that rally was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of Australian families, all fighting for Australian values at work—many of them in that sacred piece of territory, the ‘G’, and many of them in other places. Some were long-term Liberal voters. Indeed we heard from one or two long-term Liberal voters who explained what had happened to them with their AWAs. They were there fighting for Australian values, in particular that fundamental Australian value of a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.

Australians were doing it in 300 sites. They were doing it in Busselton to Broome, Wollongong to Wagga Wagga, Toowoomba to Townsville, Queenstown to George Town and Bordertown to Roxby Downs—in every state, every territory, every city and almost every big town and regional centre in Australia. Working families are waking up to what these laws will do to their lives. They are asking the Prime Minister to think about their families instead of his ideology. But he will not; he is not interested. The power has gone to his head. This Prime Minister believes he can get away with anything. He believes that he can do what he likes with the Australian people.

We saw another example of that in question time today. It is extraordinary: the government now doles out taxpayers’ money, not Liberal Party money, through Liberal Party candidates at election time. In other countries this is called money politics. In other countries this is called policy corruption and requires examination by an appropriate audit process. Where it occurs in the South Pacific, it is the subject of ministerial and prime ministerial interventions and arguments. When you go to a number of South Pacific countries, what do you say to them? You say this to them: you must not hand out all the aid money that we give to you as the personal plaything of individual members of parliament because that is corrupt. We say to Papua New Guineans and others that it has to be dispensed by a dispassionate process. Good heavens! Exactly the behaviour that is protested against by our ministers when they visit the region around us is in fact routinely practised in this place now by an arrogant, out-of-touch Howard government.

We on this side of the House have never said that the sky would fall in with the government’s Work Choices legislation. We have never said that mass unemployment or sackings would result from it. We have always talked about a slow burn, a dismantling of people’s conditions piece by piece over time, and that is precisely what is happening now. That is the record of the material that we bring into this chamber and ask questions about, one AWA after another.

There has never been a greater contrast than exists now between the policies of our two political parties, with an absolute divide on industrial relations but in so many other areas as well—our nation-building program for broadband, their idea about selling off Telstra; our stake in Medibank Private, their bungled sell-off; our plan to train Australians, their importation of foreigners; our investment in infrastructure, their plans for public servants’ super; our kick-start for innovation, their growing foreign debt; our childcare centres at local schools, their childcare shambles; our reforms of Aussie health, their blame-shifting and neglect; our cutting-edge fuel industries, their dependence on foreign oil; our plans for renewables and clean coal, their plans for nuclear reactors and nuclear waste; our plan to protect Australians from climate change, their plan to hope it goes away; our practical measures on terrorism, their war in Iraq; our collective bargaining, their AWAs. (Time expired)

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

What a sad, morose, deflated opposition we have here. Their only interest as far as jobs are concerned is who is going to have the job of Leader of the Opposition next week. That is what is going through their minds as they sit there. I have been in opposition when we went through these sorts of travails, and you can see it written all over the faces of the members of the opposition.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’ll be in opposition after the 2007 election!

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

The member for Fowler will remove herself under standing order 94(a).

The member for Fowler then left the chamber.

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

We had this half-hearted performance today from the Leader of the Opposition. They do not support him but they do not support anybody else. That is the depth to which we have sunk as far as the Australian Labor Party are concerned here. Let us go to some of the data rather than to this overblown rhetoric that we got once again from the Leader of the Opposition. When you strip away that rhetoric, when you strip away all the exorbitant comments that were made, when you strip away this frenzied campaign that the labour movement is engaged in in Australia and when you strip away the lies, the distortions and the hysteria—when you strip all of that away—the reality today is that Work Choices is working. It is working for Australian workers and their families, it is working for Australian businesses and it is working for the economy.

I was amused to note that the Leader of the Opposition is now trying to rewrite his own history. He said just a few moments ago that he had not claimed the sky was going to fall in in Australia. Let us go to what claims were made. At a press conference on 10 October 2005, the Leader of the Opposition said:

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

You can hear him saying it in that overblown way—‘No, this is about slashing wages—make no doubt about that whatsoever.’ Of course he was saying the sky was going to fall in in Australia. So let us look at the claims that were made and let us look at a time eight months after Work Choices was introduced—not according to what I say but according to what the ABS economic data shows as a result of Work Choices being introduced on 27 March of this year. The first claim, to quote one of the well-known union officials in Australia, was that Work Choices would be ‘a green light for mass sackings’. Let us examine that claim. Since Work Choices was introduced, we have seen not mass sackings but the creation of 165,000 new jobs in Australia, of which 129,000 are full-time jobs. In the first six months alone, we saw an extremely significant increase in job growth in Australia. Let us put this in a historic context. The average job creation for the same six-month period after 27 March for the last 20 years in Australia was just 70,000 jobs. In other words, the long-term 20-year average job creation rate in Australia for the six-month period following the end of March was just over 70,000 jobs. Yet we have seen 165,000 new jobs created in this country since the end of March. A green light for mass sackings? Hardly!

We have an unemployment rate today in this country which stands at a 30-year low of 4.6 per cent. What were the unemployment figures when the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training—although probably more accurately described in those days as the ‘minister for unemployment’? There was double-digit unemployment in many parts of this country. It was the job the Leader of the Opposition said he was least interested in in his terms as a minister—the one he said he gave up having an interest in. Today we have a 4.6 per cent unemployment rate.

Mr Deputy Speaker, can I take you back to 1996, when the Workplace Relations Act was introduced in Australia. We had the same dire warnings about what would happen to the economy. We were told then that the sky was going to fall in. Yet since then we have seen 1.9 million jobs created in Australia. So the first claim that Work Choices is about mass sackings and that it would lead to greater unemployment in this country has been proved definitively and absolutely wrong—not according to what I say but according to the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The second claim is the one which the Leader of the Opposition now wants to run away from, saying, ‘I did not make these claims.’ But in October 2005 he did say:

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

What do we see in Australia? Tomorrow, one million of the lowest paid workers in Australia will receive a $27 a week pay rise by virtue of the first decision of the Australian Fair Pay Commission—a Fair Pay Commission that the Leader of the Opposition has promised to rip up and abolish. Tomorrow the one million lowest paid award reliant employees in this country will get a record $27 increase in their pay packets as a result of the Fair Pay Commission. Is this slashing the wages of Australians?

Wages are growing at about four per cent in Australia at the present time. Since the Howard government came to office, wages have grown in real terms by over 16 per cent. How do those 10 or 11 years compare with the previous 13 years of the Labor government when Kim Beazley had the financial and employment levers in his hands as the responsible minister? Real wages under the Labor government went backwards in this country. Real wages went backwards for the ordinary workers of Australia under the government of which the Leader of the Opposition was a senior member; yet real wages have risen in the last 10 years by 16.4 per cent. The claim that this was about slashing the wages of Australians is proved again, according to the economic data from the ABS and other sources, to be absolutely false.

The Leader of the Opposition said that there is no productivity agenda here—this will hurt the Australian economy. The last release of data in relation to labour productivity shows that that productivity factor is growing by 2.2 per cent in Australia. So the claim that this is going to drive down productivity in Australia has been proved once again, on the official data, to be absolutely wrong.

Then we were told, again by the Leader of the Opposition, that these extreme changes risked dragging us back into an era of heightened industrial conflict. Do you remember the Leader of the Opposition saying that the workers and the bosses of Australia would be at each other’s throats—there would be blood in the streets as a result of the Work Choices legislation coming into place?  Let us look at the data again. Let us look at the record of what has occurred and let us go back to when Mr Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, was the minister for employment in Australia. At that time the official measure of disputation and strikes—that is, the number of working days lost per thousand employees—stood at 104 working days lost per thousand employees. I ask, rhetorically, what does the latest data show?

Kim Beazley said we would get an outbreak of strikes and industrial disputation. The latest ABS data for the June quarter of this year shows that we have just 3.1 working days lost per thousand employees in Australia. We have the lowest level of industrial disputation in this country since records have been kept—and those records go back before the time of Gallipoli. Records about industrial disputation in Australia have been kept, in one form or another, since 1913. We have the lowest level of industrial disputation in the history of record keeping in Australia. If you look also at what people are earning under this arrangement, you will see people on agreements are earning much more than people under the old award system. People on individual AWAs are earning something like 100 per cent more than the relevant award and 13 per cent more than the equivalent certified agreement.

The Leader of the Opposition cannot even come in here and get his story right when he makes these claims. In the last couple of days—and he repeated them in his contribution earlier—he was making claims about the Commonwealth Bank. What he and the member for Perth failed to disclose when they raised this matter in the parliament—things not being disclosed properly is a fairly common practice—is that the Commonwealth Bank has been offering individual AWAs since 1997, and 8,000 of some 35,000 employees are on individual AWAs and have been in many instances for years. In the certified agreement negotiated by the Financial Sector Union on behalf of Commonwealth Bank employees there is a clause which provides that the bank can offer individual AWAs and that they can be voluntarily taken up by employees. Commonwealth Bank employees obviously knew about and wanted to make use of the advantages of individual AWAs. But we hear nothing about this in the misleading claims brought into the House today.

Again, the Leader of the Opposition says that we have a 2002 certified agreement, but he has failed to disclose—and this is a common practice—that there has been a pay increase every year under that certified agreement from the Commonwealth Bank and that employees, whether new or existing, can make a choice between individual AWAs and certified agreements.

The Commonwealth Bank wants to provide more flexibility by meeting some of its competitors in the financial sector and by opening some Commonwealth Bank branches on a Saturday morning, which will no doubt be to the advantage of many families and individuals in Australia who would like to do some of their banking on a Saturday morning in person and not just at a hole in the wall. Seven hundred jobs are available in some 65 locations around Australia, and the Commonwealth Bank has had 2,300 applications from its employees to work on Saturday morning in those jobs. But, if the Leader of the Opposition had his way, absolutely none of this would occur. Whatever piece of economic data we like to take, the claims made in 1996 and again over the last 12 months by the Leader of the Opposition have proven to be absolutely wrong. The editorial of the Financial Review today says:

The band—

referring to the band at the MCG—

like the class-war rhetoric and ‘everybody out’ tactics, will be straight from the 1970s. Today’s union movement national day of protest against workplace reforms will generate a warm nostalgic glow in the bosoms of participating workers and supporters. But the vast majority of employees will continue on their merry way at work, oblivious to the retro fashions being paraded at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and other protest sites—

and that is the reality. That is the inconvenient truth for the opposition. The overwhelming majority of Australian workers were at work today. They told us that this was a rally to fill the G. I have been to the G a few times. It holds close to 100,000 people. According to the ABC report, they got 40,000 to 45,000 people at the G. This demonstrates the growing disconnect between what is happening for ordinary Australians and the scare campaign by the Leader of the Opposition. You have to ask: why would you engage in a campaign that is detrimental to prosperity in this country and detrimental to Australian workers and their families gaining the benefits over the last 10 years and the last six to eight months in particular under this legislation? The reality is that this is not about the jobs of Australians but about one job—that is, who sits in that seat opposite in the House of Representatives? The Leader of the Opposition is under attack and so he caves in weekly to anybody who might threaten his position.

John Robertson of Unions New South Wales came out and threatened his leadership a few months ago. He turned up a day or so later at the New South Wales union conference saying that he will do what they want and that is rip up Australian workplace agreements. Greg Combet, the Secretary of the ACTU, said, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if we got back to where the unions ran the country again.’ They are doing that through Mr Beazley, whom they support in the ongoing role of leader.

Two of the gentlemen sitting opposite are the greatest supporters in here for Mr Beazley continuing this leadership because they know—perhaps all four of them know—that if there were a change of leadership their jobs would be in danger as well. It is interesting that this morning colleagues of those sitting opposite were talking to the newspapers, saying that their tactics were appalling, that the member for Perth was a dud and that they were going nowhere with this. Why is that? Because they are concentrating on one thing only—that is, who is the Leader of the Opposition? In the meantime, we will get on with the job of governing this country, of managing the economy, so that we can grow more jobs, so wages can continue to grow, so that the prosperity which we enjoy today in this country can be the prosperity which the children of this generation will enjoy into the future.

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

The thesis articulated by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has four essential points: firstly, that the government’s extreme and unfair industrial relations legislation is absolutely essential to our economic prosperity and indeed, from 27 March, is the cause of our economic prosperity; secondly, that there is not one problem in the government’s legislation, that not one problem has adversely impacted upon an Australian employee, an Australian worker or an Australian family; thirdly, that anyone who makes a legitimate point about the adverse implications of this legislation and how it has have adversely impacted upon real Australians out in their workplaces and with their families is engaging in shocking and terrible misleading; and, fourthly, that because Labor said on 28 March this year, when the legislation took effect, that the Western world as we know it would stop and the sky would fall in, there is no problem that you need to worry about. Let us deal with each of those in turn—firstly, the government’s assertion that this legislation is absolutely essential to the economy and to our economic prosperity and, indeed, that every economic circumstance we have seen since 27 March this year is a direct consequence of the legislation.

I recall the last election being based centrally on the economy and its management. Did we hear one word about these proposals in the course of that election campaign? When the Prime Minister said, ‘This election is about trust. Who do you trust to manage the economy?’ did we hear one word about these proposals? Not only did we not hear one word about these proposals in the government’s formal election policy commitment on industrial relations, but when the Prime Minister physically launched this in Brisbane in September 2004, he was asked whether he proposed to seek to abolish the no disadvantage test and he said no. Not only was there nothing about this legislation in these commitments to the Australian people, but a central piece of the government’s legislation—the abolition of the no disadvantage test—was positively disavowed by the Prime Minister in a case of deliberate misleading and deception.

Why do we have economic prosperity in Australia at this point in time? Is it because the government has passed an extreme piece of industrial relations legislation from 27 March? No. We are into our 16th year of economic growth, much of that set up by the structural reforms made by the Labor Party when last in government. In more recent years, we have had the benefit of a resources boom to China. What do international and domestic experiences tell us about the economic impact of these proposals on the Australian economy? The domestic experience in the states of Western Australia and Victoria, where proposals similar to these were introduced at the state level, showed two essential economic outcomes: a reduction in wages of those people in the workforce and a reduction in state based productivity. We have seen exactly the same outcomes in New Zealand where proposals similar to these were also introduced at the point in time when, in Australia, we introduced collective enterprise bargaining. We saw Australian productivity increase massively and at the same time in New Zealand, as a result of individual contracts, productivity and economic growth declined.

The OECD employment outlook 2006 underlines all of these points. If you want to get productivity into your economy, rely upon collective enterprise bargaining. That is where you will get the productivity improvements. All the domestic and international economic experience about these measures is: wages down, productivity down. And wages down is what the government is all about. Why is that? Central to a range of issues raised by the Leader of the Opposition, me and my colleagues yesterday and today was the abolition of the so-called no disadvantage test, taking away the conditions and entitlements that Australians have come to rely upon for their take-home pay: penalty rates, leave loading, shift allowances, rest breaks and the like. This is best shown by the list of 46 award conditions expressly excluded by the Commonwealth Bank AWA.

My second point is that the government asserts that everything that we find in these measures is good. Indeed, in question time today the minister said, ‘These measures make Australians better off.’ The Leader of the Opposition asked him a very simple question: ‘If you assert that these measures make Australians better off, give a guarantee that no individual Australian employee will be worse off as a result of these measures.’ That is a guarantee that the Prime Minister has refused to give from day one. When he was asked in 1996 about the so-called Reith proposals, he gave that guarantee. Chastened by that experience, he knew, as the tricky politician that he is, that this was not a guarantee he could give now. How does he combat that? He combats that by saying, ‘Anyone who raises a point which might suggest that someone out there in the workplace, out there in the suburbs or out there in Australian society has been adversely impacted by these measures must be engaging in a shocking and terrible misleading.’ He will blackguard anyone who raises a legitimate factual point.

We know the Prime Minister is a serial misleader of the Australian public when it comes to industrial relations and that is reflected by the absence of any of these measures in that 2004 election document. Some of us have been around long enough to know that the phrase ‘Honest John’ was always an ironic expression. That applies to no greater extent than when the Prime Minister is engaging in a conversation about industrial relations. He will do anything, say anything or mislead anyone to slide through the adverse political, social and economic consequences of his extreme and unfair measures.

The next point the government makes is that the Labor Party said that the sky would fall in on 28 March. Just put to one side the fact that we did not say that—no-one asserted that the Western world as we know it would stop on 28 March as a result of the introduction of these measures—but the Prime Minister and the minister are out there saying, ‘The sky hasn’t fallen in! The sky hasn’t fallen in!’ Labor has raised case after case in this House. Guess what? In each of those cases, the sky has fallen in for the individuals concerned. They have either been unfairly dismissed without a remedy or they have had their take-home pay components shredded by an AWA which cuts out their penalty rates, their overtime, their shift allowance, their roster arrangement, their tea break and their capacity for decent work and family balance and a decent take-home pay package. They are pushed onto an AWA which has no unfair dismissal remedy, no protection from the umpire and which shreds those take-home pay conditions and components.

Without going through the complete list, let us just look at how the sky has fallen in for some people since 27 March. The Prime Minister does not like it when we remind him of Annette Harris. The sky fell in for her when her employer tried to force her onto a 2c per hour AWA where her overtime and penalty rates were shredded. The sky fell in for the Cowra abattoir workers when they were told that they could be sacked unfairly with no remedy for so-called operational reasons. You will all recall the minister and the Prime Minister saying publicly, ‘Oh, operational reasons—there’s no change.’ Recently, the government put a submission to the Industrial Relations Commission on an operational reasons matter. The government’s own submission said that the law had changed in this area: the threshold for operational reasons was lower and that, if operational reasons were there, when it came to the dismissing of individual employees, merit did not apply. So the sky fell in for the Cowra abattoir workers. I remember the Triangle Cable case, which was one of the first cases of unfair dismissal after this legislation came into effect. I remember seeing two or three employees on ABC TV, one of them saying words to the effect of: ‘I have been here for 20 or 30 years. I have a wife, a mortgage and four kids. I don’t know what I’ll do.’ The sky had fallen in for them.

Finally, the government says, ‘Let’s rely upon the data.’ There is only one problem: when it comes to this area, the government has now deliberately hidden the data. At Senate estimates in May, the Office of the Employment Advocate made the point that, when it came to AWAs, 16 per cent of AWAs removed all those take-home pay components, the so-called protected award conditions; 100 per cent removed one; 64 per cent removed leave loadings; 63 per cent removed penalty rates; and 52 per cent removed shift loadings. What did the government do after that data, its own data, was pushed out? Come November, at Senate estimates, it refused to release that data.

Let us explode the myths. On a day when hundreds of thousands of Australians have marched in the streets to make their point—they think this legislation is unfair, they think it is extreme, they think it should be chucked out—these government myths should be thrown away and the government itself thrown away at the next election. (Time expired)

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

The ALP’s argument today is that they are looking for a guarantee that jobs will be secure. They are also denying the fact that they have talked up the fear campaign over the last 12 months. We are seeing an ALP that has been told to get in here today, on the day of action, and muscle up to the government. Where in the legislation that the ALP passed in this House in the 1990s did it guarantee the one million people who were unemployed during the nineties a job? The problem with the Labor Party and the union movement is that they are not interested in the welfare of the unemployed. They keep talking about those who have jobs, but they have shown no interest at all in those who are unemployed. If they showed any interest at all, they would have recognised that, in the seven or eight months since Work Choices came in, we have seen 165,000 new jobs created compared to the 10.9 per cent unemployment rate during the Labor Party’s term in office. If they deny my claim, all I have to do is refer to a certain minister, who, on 30 June 1993, said:

... my father said to me when I got the Defence portfolio that ... I’d been given the poisoned chalice. I thought then he was wrong and now I know he really was wrong. I have it now.

Of course, that was the current Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, speaking about his portfolio as the then minister for employment. He also said in 1993, when he was asked by an interviewer:

So this group—

the unemployed—

are being told, in their twenties, by society, effectively: You’re the losers; go to the scrap heap.

This was Kim Beazley’s response to that interviewer:

Well, those who haven’t made it into work and who are among the long-term unemployed, that’s a reasonable statement.

He gave up, and those people remained unemployed. Yet what have we seen in the 10 years that the Howard government has been in place? We have seen 1.9 million people get a job. These are people who can now go home after work and sit down with their families. They have a wage that they bring home so they are able to pay their bills, feed their family and pay for the kids to go to school. They are not like those who were unemployed, who were denied any form of support or even attention by those opposite when they were in power.

The ALP have said today that they have never talked up the fear, that they have never talked about the immediate adverse impacts of Work Choices—that this will be a slow burn. This is rhetoric that is changing. It is a shifting sands argument by those on the other side. Of course they created a fear campaign. Of course they are out there talking about doom and gloom. I recall the Leader of the Opposition in this chamber saying that the divorce rate would go up because of Work Choices. The absurdity of the man, making those sorts of claims!

The Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth are two men under pressure. They are under pressure and they are under the microscope of the union movement at the moment. They are now of course trying to back-pedal from some of the comments that they made. They have been told to come in here and muscle up once again.

We keep hearing, over and over again, exaggerated claims by those on the other side. The union movement this morning attempted to flex its muscle in an effort to demonstrate its relevance to the Australian workplace. The call went out to fill the ‘G’. I know about that call to fill the ‘G’ because three-quarters of my electorate was letterboxed with ‘Fill the “G”!’ And, of course, mine was just one of many electorates targeted. What did we see? We saw 45,000 people turn up. I think Carlton and Fremantle get more spectators at their games than turned up today. In fact, I would guess that Jimmy Barnes, the rock legend that he is, could probably get 30,000 of those on his own, without even having it forced, because of his status. If you said, ‘Free attendance, a day off work—come and listen to Jimmy Barnes, a great Australian rock legend,’ you would expect a minimum of 30,000 just to come along and listen to the man, without having some sort of campaign attached to it by the union movement.

The call went out and what we are seeing now is exaggerated claims about the numbers of people who have attended these rallies. There is one thing about those on the other side: if they tell a furphy often enough, people are bound to believe it. That is what this campaign is all about, and that is of course what we are also seeing with the exaggerated claims of those who attended the rallies today.

At today’s rally the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, joined his union mates on the stage and railed against Work Choices. He claimed that Australians would be working harder, for longer hours and for less pay. This is, of course, a perfect example of the misstatements and half-truths that have surrounded Work Choices. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations outlined today in question time and also during his contribution on the MPI the proud record of this government in delivering jobs, in delivering wages growth and also in ensuring that the number of disputations in this country has dropped right off.

For the record, we have seen 165,000 new jobs since Work Choices came in—not for the whole year; only since Work Choices came in. If you take the whole year, it is even more. We have also seen real wage growth of 16.4 per cent in the last 10 years. We have also seen that, contrary to the bad old days of damaging strikes and industrial disputes, working days lost in Australia have fallen dramatically from 104 per 1,000 employees in 1994, when Kim Beazley was responsible for employment, to today’s level of 3.1 days—a single-digit figure—per 1,000 employees. This is the lowest level of industrial disputation in the history of this nation.

He went on to deride the changes, refusing to acknowledge that the changes to workplace relations since 1996 have really delivered these better outcomes. Instead, we hear stories about rights being stripped away, workers being forced to sign AWAs or get the sack and people being sacked for no good reason. Yet when each of these stories is subjected to even the most cursory examination they are found to be exaggerated, overstated or simply manipulated to fit the requirements of the opposition. The member for Perth, who is a serial offender at this, has been found out on a number of occasions.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So none of that’s true?

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

He repeated one just a moment ago when he talked about Annette Harris being forced to go onto an AWA. She was not forced to go onto an AWA; as an existing employee, she could certainly maintain her current arrangements. He came in here and repeated the same thing all over again.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Adams interjecting

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

The member for Lyons should know that he is on very thin ice!

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

Yesterday, the member for Perth came into the chamber asking questions regarding the Commonwealth Bank and was caught out once again when he failed to mention that, five years ago, the Financial Sector Union agreed, on behalf of its members, that a range of conditions could be exempted. This is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Retail Banking Services enterprise bargaining agreement 2002, between the bank and the FSU. What does it say? It says:

12.2 Where an employee accepts an offer in terms of clause 12.1, he or she may be exempted from the provisions of the Award and EBA in relation to:

• rostered days off
• overtime and separate attendance
• meal allowance
• leave in lieu of travelling time
• on-call allowance
• telephone availability allowance
• higher duty allowance
• annual leave loading.

These are things which could have been negotiated away in a 2002 agreement between the union and the bank. He did not mention that when he came in yesterday. He reeled off his 46 items, which can also be negotiated away if someone enters into a new AWA with the bank. The member for Perth comes in here and makes his exaggerated claims.

We also found out today that for the 755 positions the Commonwealth Bank is offering in 65 locations where the branches will be open on Saturdays there were 2,300 applications. There are 2,300 people who are applying for Saturday jobs? Why are they doing that? Because the arrangements suit their particular conditions in balancing family and work. That is why they are going along. So when they talk about people voting with their feet— (Time expired)

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

Order! This discussion is now concluded.