Stuart Henry (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister advise the House of how the government is protecting the rights of over one million Australian independent contractors and allowing them to choose the form of working arrangements that best suit their particular needs?

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

I thank the member for Hasluck for his question. In answering it, I note that the latest unemployment figures show that the unemployment rate in the electorate of Hasluck has fallen from 7.4 per cent, when this government was first elected in 1996, to just 3.8 per cent. Indeed, in the labour market figures that were released today, we saw that in the month of November alone there were 8,400 extra jobs created in the state of Western Australia. Some of those jobs were for people who work in the company Perth Regional Roof Trusses, which won the Prime Minister’s Small Business Award last night—some of its representatives that I know are in the gallery here today. I had the pleasure of visiting, with the member for Hasluck, that company just a couple of weeks ago. Perth Regional Roof Trusses is a very significant company because most of its employees are hearing impaired and I think it is a great credit to that company that they provide employment for those people.

The Leader of the Opposition says that he supports the aspirations of Australian families, yet what we see from the opposition and its leader is opposition to the very policies that actually lead to the prosperity of Australian families. There are over one million independent contractors in Australia today. This parliament gave them further protection and, indeed, recognition with the passage of the Independent Contractors Bill 2006 just this past week. That bill provides legislative protection for those Australians who want to be their own boss—that great Australian aspiration of getting out, having a go, starting a business, building a business and being able to be your own boss. These new laws protect the freedom of those people to get on with running their own businesses, without unwarranted union interference and without the prescriptive controls of state industrial relations systems.

I was interested to listen to some of the musings of the Leader of the Opposition this week and there was one in particular which caught my ear. He said:

... I am constantly impressed by the entrepreneurialism of our small business sector and our independent contractors who are out there doing interesting and innovative and creative things.

He obviously was not so ‘constantly impressed’ to actually vote for this legislation in the parliament to support those very independent contractors. He voted against it, along with the rest of the Australian Labor Party. So I suppose this is more about what it means to be impressed with style rather than substance. It means paying lip-service, as he did, to those hardworking Australians who want to be able to get out there, have a go and build their own businesses. They give them lip-service but do nothing to support them when it comes to a vote in this parliament. It is not what you say; it is what you do that counts. We saw in the vote this week what happened as far as the Australian Labor Party is concerned.

What we have seen here from the new Leader of the Opposition is the same old policy and the same trade unions dictating to the Leader of the Opposition what the industrial relations policy for those opposite will be. We understand that the member for Lalor is going to be their new spokesman in relation to this—from that firm Slater and Gordon, who were the paid guns for hire for the radical unions, the BLF and the CFMEU. She is going to get the job—clearly, a dictation from the unions and, in the future, it will be just the same with the policy. It may be a new leader, but it is the same old Labor.