Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Prime Minister and refers to the question of the future of Australian families. Is the Prime Minister aware of a report recently released by the Melbourne Institute which documents that more that one million Australian employees are working more than 50 hours a week and more than half of these workers are unhappy about it? How can the Prime Minister claim to support family values with this 24/7 industrial relations system, given that it places even more pressure on working parents and families?

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

I am generally aware of that report. I am also generally aware of the fact that we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years. The Leader of the Opposition is inviting a debate on the relative position of Australian families. He attacks our Work Choices legislation without acknowledging in any way a number of fundamental changes that have occurred in the Australian community over the last 10½ years. The fact is the foundation of economic security for any family is a secure job for the breadwinner. As Tony Blair rightly said, and it should pass into the federal political lexicon in this country, fairness in the workplace starts with the chance of a job.

On that measurement, there has been no fairer government to the families of Australia than the government I have led over the last 10½ years because the relative improvement in unemployment in this country has been more dramatic under this government than under any government, I believe, since the end of World War II. If you go beneath those figures we see other improvements. Long-term unemployment was the lowest on record in October of 2006. This is the hardcore unemployed. There are thousands of children living in families that still have two parents out of work. The long-term unemployment rate is the lowest on record and it is 117,000 lower than it was 10 years ago. In families with children under 15 years, joblessness has fallen from 18.9 per cent in 1993 to some 14.1 per cent now. We have seen dramatic increases in real wages.

May I remind those who sit opposite that, when they last had the responsibility for caring for Australian families, the real wages of those families fell by 0.2 per cent over a period of 13 years. What sort of justice did Labor deliver to the one million people who were thrown out of work with the recession we had to have? We have seen a rise of 16.4 per cent since March 1996 in the level of real wages in this country.

The great virtue of our industrial relations policy is that it has laid the groundwork for further prosperity into the future. It is the case that tomorrow’s prosperity can only be built off the back of today’s reforms. Those who would wind back our reforms are condemning us to a less prosperous future. We brought in Work Choices because we believed it would add to the strength and productivity of the Australian economy. The evidence to date bears that out—the number of additional jobs, the fall in strikes and the continued increase in real wages. Those who believe in a secure, prosperous future support Work Choices. Those who would take us back to a union dominated past oppose it. The Leader of the Opposition has made it perfectly clear that he falls into the latter category.