Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Would the Deputy Prime Minister advise the House of how the government’s workplace policies have helped drive growth in regional areas? How would a union-driven agenda affect jobs in regional Australia?

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

I thank the member for Cowper for his question. The member for Cowper, since being elected to this place, has taken a great deal of interest in how to improve the circumstances of the unemployed in his electorate. The unemployment level in Cowper under Labor got up to 17.8 per cent. It was just outrageous in that part of the mid North Coast. But since then, under the policies of the coalition government, it has come down to 7.9 per cent.

The member for Cowper is working very hard to get it even lower with creative ways to find people opportunities in the workplace. One of those—and it was very strongly supported by the member for Cowper—was our Work Choices policy, particularly getting rid of the unfair dismissal laws that Laurie Brereton introduced back in the nineties. If there is anything that has assisted the small businesses and the people that work in those small businesses in the seat of Cowper, it is getting rid of those unfair dismissal laws and the burden that they placed on small businesses in that electorate.

The record shows that, since Work Choices was introduced, there are 263,000 new jobs in the economy, many of those in the small business sector. We now see unemployment at a 30-year low, and wages growth has reached a level of 19.8 per cent. Most importantly, we have witnessed the lowest levels of industrial disputes on record during the term of the coalition government. Our policies have certainly unshackled regional economies to do what they do best: generate economic growth and wealth in their areas and therefore generate employment opportunities for young people in regional Australia. It is critically important that we do not go backwards on this reform agenda, that we continue to go forwards.

The Prime Minister mentioned a while ago the battle that we had to have, particularly with the union movement and the Labor Party, to reform the waterfront. They told us you could not achieve anything better than 16.9 crane lifts per hour. They said, ‘This is world’s best practice and we’re doing it in Australia.’ Since those reforms have been introduced, they are now doing 27 lifts an hour. It is the single most important reform and has made us much more competitive in the international marketplace as far as our exporters are concerned.

When those reforms were introduced—and you can look around the ranks of the Labor Party on the other side of this place—we remember that the President of the ACTU who opposed those was the member for Throsby—

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

We opposed the dogs.

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

and she happily acknowledges that they opposed them every inch of the way. There was a battle but it was a battle that we believed we had to win to ensure the efficiency of Australia and the competitiveness of our export industries and to generate jobs for the future. We do not have to go too far back into history to find a bit more form sitting on the front benches of the Labor Party. Regional Australians, particularly the beef producers in regional Australia, all remember the Mudginberri dispute back in the 1980s. It cost the beef industry millions of dollars. Who was the head of the ACTU then? None other than the member for Hotham. We well remember that battle in the Mudginberri dispute. It gives you an indication of the roots of the policy of the Labor Party. We know that the Leader of the Opposition is no great mate of Bill Ludwig’s, but I am sure that the tentacles reach in there somewhere. There is one more example we need to give. When the member for Batman left the presidency of the ACTU in 1996 there were 928,000 days of work lost per annum in the Australian economy. That was the rate of industrial disputes in 1996. Today it is down to 132,000. When the member for Batman was last the President of the ACTU it was 928,000.

With the advent of more representation coming into the Labor Party from the ACTU and the union movement, we know in which direction industrial relations policy is going to go. It is not going to go in the direction of assisting small businesses in the electorate of Cowper to put on more people and generate economic growth. If the voters in Australia want to support job creators, they need to support the coalition government.