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

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

The Government’s failure to establish the foundation for the long term prosperity of Australian families.

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—

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is more than a creeping arrogance about this government when it is led by a Prime Minister and defended by a Treasurer who say the sorts of things we have heard in this parliament in recent days. This is a Prime Minister who told us all yesterday—and it is important that the House pay attention to what the Prime Minister said yesterday—that ‘working families in Australia have never been better off’. According to the Prime Minister, working families under financial pressure have never been better off; working families now struggling with four consecutive interest rate rises have never been better off; working families coping with the four interest rises that the Prime Minister promised at the last election would never happen have never been better off; working families coping with record housing non-affordability, according to recent reports, have never been better off; working families struggling with rising rates of home repossession have never been better off; and working families struggling with skyrocketing child-care bills have never been better off.

Well, I think that we on this side of the House have some news for the Prime Minister. When the Prime Minister starts telling the Australian people that they have never had it so good, you know one thing for certain: we have a Prime Minister who is arrogant and out of touch—arrogant and exceptionally out of touch. What we also know is that when a government is out of touch and is arrogant that is when we see governments going a bridge too far beyond what the Australian people can cope with. I refer, of course, to the industrial relations laws.

What we have with this Prime Minister and this remarkable statement that working families in Australia have never been better off is a Prime Minister who, after 11 long years, is himself out of touch, a Prime Minister who, after 11 long years in office, is now showing signs of arrogance, and a Prime Minister who, after 11 long years, has definitely gone too far when it comes to these industrial relations laws. This Prime Minister has changed. The Prime Minister of old would never have made a slip and said something like that in the past. The Prime Minister of 10 years ago would never have said that. If you go to the Hansard of 27 May 1997—10 years ago—what will you find? You will find the Prime Minister in his political prime lecturing and hectoring the then Leader of the Opposition. What did the Prime Minister then say? He said:

... you will never get from this Prime Minister an arrogant dismissal on the basis of ‘You have never had it so good’ ...

There we have the Prime Minister, 10 years ago, saying that he would never succumb to such hubris, that he would never succumb to such language—until yesterday when he said that Australian families had never been as well off. I have to say that it is reminiscent of the great criticism we had from their side of the House. It goes right back, I think, to the 1970s. Do you remember EG Whitlam saying to Australian farmers that they had never had it so good, and the Prime Minister saying in the mid-nineties that he would never, ever repeat a statement of such arrogance—that people had never had it so good? But, after 11 years in office, we have a Prime Minister so detached from the realities faced by working families across this country that he now says that they have never had it so good.

He did this in response to a dorothy dixer. It was a premeditated response, not a response to some provocation from the opposition and not a response to some loose comment on the run. When the Prime Minister told Australian families that they have never been better off, it was in response to a dorothy dixer, a question from the government’s own ranks. When he said to working families right across the country that they have never had it so good, these statements were delivered by the hubris of having been in high office now for 11 years. I have to say that when you match that remark against the pressures that working families are now under and will prospectively face with these unfair and un-Australian workplace laws, these industrial relations laws, they are words that will indeed come back to haunt the Prime Minister between now and election day.

One of the leading indicators that the government is experiencing a few political problems is when the lights burn late down at Crosby Textor. When the lights are burning late down at Crosby Textor, it is not just that they are increasing their carbon footprint; there are a few other things that are underway as well. It is a sure sign and symbol that life is not proceeding swimmingly in the government ranks, because the challenge being put to Crosby Textor of late has been along these lines: how do we convince the Australian people that these unfair and un-Australian workplace laws are in fact good for people? How do we convince Australian working families that black is white? How do we convince Australian working families that when they lose their penalty rates it is in fact good for them? How do we convince Australian working families that when they lose their overtime payments it is in fact good for them? How do we convince Australian families that when they lose their holiday leave loading that is in fact good for them? That is the challenge for the polling professionals—the Crosby Textor incorporated enterprise.

We now know the outcome of that research project. It is the Prime Minister’s five-part cunning plan for dealing with these unfair industrial relations laws between now and the next election. Part 1 is this: pretend you are Winston Churchill and that you assert that your industrial relations laws are a fundamental national economic reform, even when you have zero evidence to substantiate it. Part 2 is this: pretend that employment growth is the direct product of these IR laws and pretend equally that the mining boom’s impact on economic and employment growth does not exist. Part 3 is this: pretend that the industrial relations laws have generated unprecedented wages growth and pretend that contrary ABS data does not exist. Then there is part 4: claim that the IR laws have heralded unprecedented industrial harmony and ignore the fact that there has been a steady reduction in working days lost since the introduction of enterprise bargaining back in the first part of the 1990s. Part 5 of the five-part cunning plan is this: if parts 1 through 4 fail, then simply return to old faithful: blame the unions, blame the states and blame your Aunt Nellie, particularly if your Aunt Nellie happens to be a paid-up unionist, because at the end of the day the unions become the scapegoat for everything which this government claims is going wrong with Australia’s national economy.

That is the five-part script, and we are going to hear that script from now until polling day. What we know about it is that it is poll driven. It is driven by their market research company because they have concluded that these are the best political spin lines for them to convince Australian working families that black is white and white is black.

There is a problem with the five-part logical presentation and that is that there is no logic to it. When we go to the essence of it, the whole proposition collapses. The first argument the Prime Minister puts is that this is an essential element of national economic reform. That is his proposition. He has repeated it day in and day out. If you listened to the Fran Kelly interview this morning on Radio National, it did not matter what question was asked, you simply got the five-part response. The question could be: has the sun come up today? The answer will be part 3 of the five-part response: blame the unions. It is simply preprogrammed, and we will hear it day in day out from Minister Hockey, who is here at the dispatch box, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. They will simply repeat key lines and themes from Crosby Textor.

On the first proposition, that this is essential for national economic reform, here are some basic questions: if it was such an essential element of national economic reform you would have thought this government would have taken it to the Australian people before the last election, but did they? It was not faintly in evidence in any proposition which the Liberal Party put to the Australian people prior to the last election. Why do we have this before us? Because they got lucky, got control of the Senate and said, ‘Bob’s your uncle’. They abused the whole doctrine of mandate. It was not any element of their pre-election program for national economic development. If it was an essential element of national economic reform, wouldn’t you have owned it with pride prior to the last election? But, no, it was hidden, because they knew that if they put it to the Australian people at that time, they would have been thumped on.

The second is this: if it was a serious piece of national economic reform, why is it that the government did not go through the basic test of submitting it to the Treasury to be modelled in terms of what productivity yield would be given to the Australian economy as a consequence of implementing this set of industrial relations changes? If it is not just an exercise in ideology; if it is not just an exercise in union bashing; if it is not just an exercise in transferring wealth from those who are employees to those who are employers; if it was a serious exercise in productivity enhancing reform, why was it not submitted to the Treasury for basic modelling? We have never had an answer to that.

The reason was that it was driven by ideology, and the data on productivity speak very clearly. Productivity growth between 1993 and 1998 was 3.2 per cent growth per annum. Then you get to the period 1998-99 to 2003-04—productivity growth starts to decline. One of the reasons why we see productivity growth coming off in that period is that this government went to sleep on the principal tasks of national economic reform during the first decade of its office. When you see the key reforms made by the Hawke and Keating government through the eighties and nineties, you realise this government effectively went to sleep, which is reflected in the fact that the productivity growth rate started to fall.

Then you have data on productivity growth, which extends across Australian jurisdictions. Look at Western Australia: when individual contracts were promoted in the 1990s under the Liberal-National government of Western Australia, labour productivity growth fell to less than four per cent a year. When Geoff Gallop’s Labor government abolished these contracts, productivity growth shot up again to over six per cent per year.

Look at the data for New Zealand: in 1991 New Zealand moved to individual contracts with the Employment Contracts Act. At the same time Australia moved to enterprise bargaining. While both nations had similar productivity growth before the early nineties, afterwards Australia’s productivity growth grew twice as fast. Australia’s embrace of collective enterprise bargaining from 1991 produced productivity growth of 29 per cent in the 1990s, while New Zealand’s embrace of a system based on individual contracts resulted in productivity growth of just 14 per cent in the same period. New Zealand professor of economics Paul Dalziel observed that the Employment Contracts Act:

... appears to have marked the end of a long period of strong comparability between New Zealand and Australian labour productivity growth, to New Zealand’s great disadvantage.

In 2004 in New Zealand, a Treasury report said that individual contracts discouraged employers from innovation and investment to the detriment of the country in general and to wage-earners in particular. Professor Mark Wooden, well known as a longstanding conservative advocate of industrial relations deregulation, stated in September 2005:

... the biggest gains for productivity still revolve around a system which is collectively based ...

The data is there. The whole proposition upon which this bogus argument is advanced is that it is essential to national economic reform to proceed with their Work Choices legislation simply falls over at every piece of evidence which exists. Again, it fails the basic test that when it comes to serious propositions of national economic reform, if you are serious about them, you would ask the Treasury for their advice.

Then there is a second argument that somehow employment growth of the last 10 months has been the exclusive product of their industrial relations legislation. Pigs might fly! This is the greatest put on that we have had in any serious debate of employment data since employment data was created. We all know the enormous impact that the mining boom has had, in Western Australia and in Queensland in particular, and the flow-on effects of the mining booms in terms of employment generation. For government ministers to stand here at the dispatch box and seriously tell the Australian people and serious economic commentators that this is a product of their industrial relations legislation of the last 10 months frankly defies belief.

Then we come to the next argument—that somehow these industrial relations laws have generated unprecedented wages growth. Go again to the ABS data: Australian women on AWAs who work full time earn on average $2.30 less per hour, or $87.40 less per week based on a standard 38-hour week, than those on collective agreements—that is a fact, Minister. Australian women on AWAs who work part time earn $3.70 less per hour, $85.10 less per week based on an average 23 hours per week, than those on collective agreements—that is a fact, Minister. And Australian women on AWAs who work as casuals earn $4.70 less per hour for every hour they work than those on collective agreements—another fact, Minister.

All these facts add up to one proposition: the argument that the government advanced, that somehow unprecedented wages growth has been the product of these industrial relations initiatives on their part, simply falls foul of the most basic survey of the ABS data. The same goes for their proposition on a reduction of industrial disputation, a trend line which has been in evidence since we introduced enterprise bargaining in the first half of the nineties. These four arguments driven by Crosby Textor are simply this: politics, pure and simple, crafted for a clever politician to try and advance an argument that black is white and white is black. The Australian people, led by Pru Goward, know that industrial relations legislation advanced by this government is a dog. It smells like a dog. It barks like a dog. It is a dog, and the reason it is a dog is that it undermines wages and conditions for working families right across this nation. The Australian people know it, and that is why they will condemn it at the next election.(Time expired)

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think that was a very insipid defence of a poor policy from the Labor leader. It comes as no surprise, really, that the Labor Party, on this the first anniversary of Work Choices, chose to ask a number of questions about what might happen in a year or two years time rather than focus on what has happened in the last 12 months. That would be because their hopes and expectations in relation to Work Choices have been dashed by the figures produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that clearly indicate that the number of jobs in Australia has continued to grow, that the wages of Australians have continued to grow and that industrial disputation is at its lowest level since 1913, the year before the First World War.

Stewart McArthur (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where is the leader going? The Leader of the Opposition should stay and hear the reply. Where is your leader?

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

Order! The member for Corangamite is well out of his seat and he is well out of order.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What the Labor Party do not understand—and it could have come about because the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labor Party have not been in parliament for very long; they are quite inexperienced—is that the way you get economic prosperity is by competing with the challenges both within our own country and outside it. Australia has faced many challenges over the last 100 years. At each moment, leaders have sought to use industrial relations to improve the productivity of the nation. Sometimes they have failed. I note that Ben Chifley tried to refer industrial relations power from the states to the Commonwealth in 1946 and failed. Sometimes they are successful. We were successful in using the referred power of the Corporations Law to create a single national system—in the face of opposition from the Labor Party, ironically. About 50 years after Chifley, we were able to introduce a single system that gave business and workers some certainty. We did it not because it was an easy decision or necessary popular; we did it because it was in the best interests of the nation. That is what good government is about. It is about making hard decisions that are in the best interests of the nation. The reforms that you make today deliver the benefits that are enjoyed by our children and will be enjoyed by children tomorrow.

When we undertook the reform of the taxation system, the Labor Party opposed it. We undertook that reform not because it was easy; it was hard. We undertook it because it was in the best interests of Australia. And thank God we did. For example, how important was abolishing the wholesale sales tax on exports in the face of the ramifications of the Asian financial crisis, when seven out of our top 10 trading partners were in recession or depression? How important was that? How important was it for us to have industrial relations reform on the waterfront when our waterfront was completely dominated by union sectoral interest?

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

Yes, with dogs and balaclavas.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No wonder the former head of the ACTU is interjecting. She is one of the union bosses who have got rid of the monkey and come straight into parliament. It is no surprise that that reform of the waterfront, which was hard reform, which was a tough decision, has delivered an improvement on crane rates, going from 17 movements per hour to about 27 movements per hour. There has been a direct flowthrough in improved productivity. The Labor Party opposed that all the way.

The Labor Party opposed our attempt to get the budget into surplus. They opposed it all the way. The Labor Party opposed us paying off $96 billion of government debt—$80 billion of which was accumulated by the Labor Party in the last decade of the Hawke-Keating government. They opposed us paying off their debt. They opposed us getting the budget into surplus. They opposed us on our first, second and third tranche of industrial relations reform. They opposed us on having independent monetary policy. The Labor Party have sought at every point to oppose us on the decisions that have helped to keep the economy strong, to keep people in jobs—to keep people in well-paid jobs that lead on to good careers.

If we talk about the work-family balance, the starting point has to be having a job. All the regulation and industrial law in the world, under the Labor Party in the 1990s, could not stop one million Australians being unemployed. When Labor were in government they had all their restrictive laws. They could not stop one million Australians and one million families suffering the huge indignity of long-term unemployment at record levels. They claim to be a caring and compassionate party, but there is no compassion in leaving a million people on the scrap heap, in unemployment for a long period of time. There is no compassion in that. There is no compassion in having people, generation after generation, stuck on welfare. There is no compassion in that. If you want to rip the heart out of working families, you can do it by ensuring that they are stuck on welfare and can never get out of it, that they are stuck in unemployment and can never get out of it. That is what they did. They thought they were compassionate. They were not compassionate at all.

Compassion is having a record number of people in jobs. Compassion is the people who are working today enjoying the highest real wages in Australian employment history. Compassion is more women than ever before having the opportunity to re-enter the workforce. Compassion is more people than ever who have been long-term unemployed going into real, full-time jobs. Compassion is undertaking the hard reforms that deliver real benefits. That is what we did a year ago. We introduced real reforms—difficult reforms—that have delivered real benefits for Australian families. I can think of no better way to help an Australian family that is ambitious for the destiny of their children than to give that family the opportunity to earn a household income and, importantly, to give them some choice and some ability to be the masters of their own destinies.

One of the vehicles for doing that is the range of agreements that we introduced through Work Choices. You can have a union collective agreement, you can have a non-union collective agreement or you can have individual Australian workplace agreements. Those agreements offer a level of flexibility never seen before in the Australian workplace, because, as the OECD said, the more restrictive and prescriptive laws are in relation to industrial relations, the more they disadvantage those most disadvantaged, particularly women and young people. The reason why our laws did not bring about a revolution in the workplace, why there was no Armageddon, why there were no Bill Shorten predicted mass sackings, why children got to see their parents at Christmas and why they had shoes on their feet when they went to school in January and February is that our laws were responding to the changing workplace.

When the Labor Party’s old restrictive workplace laws—the inflexible workplace that the Labor Party was the architect of and is still the defender of—were in place, they alienated women and young people and put them on the casual list. Business had no choice but to put them on as casuals because to put them on as full-time or part-time employees was such an enormous business risk, particularly for small business, that they could not bring them into the mainstream system. They had to leave them on the outside as casuals. It is the same with independent contractors. Why was there such growth in independent contractors? It was because the rigid mainstream system that the Labor Party defends and wants to reintroduce made it so difficult for those plumbers, sparkies and bricklayers that they had to become independent contractors to work the flexible hours that they wanted to work and to respond to the demands of their customers. Through our laws and the flexibility that we have created in the mainstream system, those people have come back in.

Casual workers have written agreements for the first time; they have been employed for 13 years as casuals, but they have never had an agreement that they could walk down to the bank with and borrow money against. The pride in their voices when they say, ‘I can buy a home, or, as a woman, ‘I now have independence in the family unit,’ is exactly why I came into this place: to make a difference to people’s lives that helps them to deliver better outcomes for themselves and their families. We are not flinching in the face of the most awesome assembled force of union money, union bosses, state Labor governments and the opposition because what we have done is in the national interest. What we have done is in the interests of the people of Australia and in the interests of their children and grandchildren.

We are responding to the challenges of a changing global marketplace. That changing global marketplace will deliver job opportunities for the generations of today and tomorrow that we could never have envisaged. In many cases, the jobs that exist today could not have been described or predicted 20 years ago, and we cannot possibly today think of all of the jobs that will exist in 20 years. That is because the world is changing. That change is either an opportunity or a threat. We have to seize it as an opportunity. We have to give hope to Australian workers of today and tomorrow that they can compete with the rest of the world. We have the emergence of China and India and the entry into the global marketplace of over two billion new workers and family, and we have a changing marketplace that is heavily influenced by the new dynamics of the internet and the digitisation of information. Whilst we have that dynamic change, we should seize the opportunity through a flexible system that responds to a changing marketplace and not see it as a threat.

While the Labor Party wants to turn everyone into a victim or a potential victim, we say, ‘Provide the appropriate protections for individuals but please give them the opportunity to be the masters of their own destinies.’ That is what we believe in. We believe in giving people hope and aspiration, giving people choice and making sure that people have the opportunity to define their future and their jobs rather than be a victim or a potential victim where only the union bosses can come in to save them.

How disappointing it was, on this, the first anniversary of Work Choices, to go on ABC Radio to debate Greg Combet. I wanted to debate the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister went on Radio National and ended up debating Greg Combet. He really wanted to debate Kevin Rudd on industrial relations. We are happy to do it; we are ready to do it. But what happens? Greg Combet pushes aside the leadership of the Labor Party, steps in and says, ‘I’m calling the shots.’ In the same way he is taking a knife to the member for Charlton and getting her out of the way, so too he is doing it to the leadership team of the Labor Party. If the leadership team of the Labor Party are not prepared to defend their own industrial relations policy, Greg Combet is prepared to do it. He is prepared to come in here and do it if he has to.

We are about higher wages, about more jobs, about fewer strikes, and about hope and opportunity for younger Australians, older Australians and the next generation of Australians. The Labor Party is about the union bosses, about winning power and about ensuring that the union bosses have a place in Australia’s future at a cost to the Australian workers.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will tell you what the Howard government is about: it is about this nation’s past, not its future. We could not have seen that more clearly on display than we have seen it in that speech and the performance of the government over the last few days.

Governments have a natural life cycle. At the start, when they are fresh, every day they get up and they ask themselves the question: ‘What else can we do for the Australian community today? What else can we do to improve the lives of Australians today?’ Then, at the end of their life cycle, they do not ask that question any more. Instead, they stand at dispatch boxes and they say, ‘This is what we’ve done for you.’ The minister just did it then and, even more spectacularly, the Prime Minister did it yesterday when he got up at the dispatch box and said, ‘Australian working families have never been better off.’ The Prime Minister was telling the Australian people, ‘This is what I’ve done for you.’ The one thing he would not do was walk to the dispatch box and tell the truth about his plans for the future.

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

The member for Lalor will withdraw that.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw that and replace it: the one thing he would not do was stand in front of the dispatch box and tell Australians what he intends for their future in industrial relations and beyond. That is partly because there are things he does not want to reveal and that is partly because there are whole areas where he does not know what he is going to do next.

Increasingly, the Prime Minister looks like a politician forged in a different age fighting yesterday’s battles. There have been some times in the last few days when I have listened to him in here, on TV or on radio and he has reminded me of those old movies we used to watch on TV where 20 years after the end of World War II they would go to an island and find a Japanese soldier who had not been told that the war was over. The whole plot of the movie would be about ensuring that these people realised that the war was over. The Prime Minister is looking like that because he is fighting the industrial relations battles of yesterday. He is a man whose policies were forged on the anvil of the past not the future, and so he thinks he can create in contemporary Australian society a big union bogy and people will fall for it.

That might have been the politics of the 1960s, it might have been the politics of the 1970s and it might even have bled into being the politics in part of the 1980s, but it is not the politics of contemporary Australia. The politics of contemporary Australia are that working people in this country get up every morning, go to work, work damn hard, come home tired and worry that they have not spent enough time with the kids. Then, despite all of that effort and all of that anxiety, at the end of the fortnight or the end of the month they look at the money coming into the household and the money going out of the household and think to themselves, ‘I’m just keeping my head above water. I’ve got to keep running quickly otherwise this tidal wave of financial insecurity will engulf me.’ That is the politics, that is the reality, of contemporary Australia, and nothing the Prime Minister says about the industrial relations debate deals with that.

Instead, he wants to fight the politics of yesterday. He wants to fight the trade union movement of yesterday. Indeed, he wants to fight the Labor Party of yesterday. So he creates in this debate a whole series of straw people that have nothing to do with the real political contest. Of course fairness starts with the chance of getting a job—absolutely. There is dignity in work. Work is important. We have an obligation to extend work to everybody in this country who is capable of performing it. That is a fundamental Labor value. If he thinks that is in contest, he is wrong. We need a growing economy. We need high-productivity workplaces. We need flexibility in those workplaces. We need to get up every day and find a new and more efficient way of getting the job done. If he thinks that is in contest, he is wrong. That is absolutely right—we need a high-productivity, high-growth economy. What is in contest is whether you achieve that by tossing fairness out the back door or with a set of workplace laws that respect working people and their employers—that respect both sides of the equation.

What the Prime Minister, his minister and every member of the Howard government have lost is a sense of what that fairness would mean. Instead, they hide. They do not want to know the truth; they do not want to deal with the truth. They are the only people in this country who do not think that the New South Wales election was fought, at least in part, on industrial relations. In fact, the members of their own political parties who fought that election think it was fought on industrial relations. Yet here they sit in their parliamentary ivory tower saying, ‘That’s an uncomfortable reality. I don’t want to know about that.’

Then the minister comes into the House. He is always full of bluster, but he is never full of facts. He does not want to confront the facts because if he did he would know that the government’s Work Choices legislation is hurting Australian working families and he cannot make that concession. Yesterday we saw this minister twist and turn on the question of whether or not he would provide further statistics on Australian workplace agreements. He ended up saying no, and after he said no he basically said, ‘I’m too dumb to think of a way of collecting them properly.’ Whether it is ‘no’ or whether he is too dumb to think of a way of collecting them properly does not much matter; the truth is the Howard government is going to keep these statistics covered up. Why is it going to keep them covered up? Because the tale they tell is one that is bad for Australian working families.

We know that in the Office of the Employment Advocate every Australian workplace agreement has to be lodged. It is there, so it is capable of being pulled out and analysed. It is not that hard. You could probably get a group of high school kids in to do it. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations does not want to do that analysis because, the only time it was done, it showed that everybody lost at least one award protection. More than 60 per cent lost penalty rates. More than 50 per cent lost shift loadings. More than 40 per cent lost a public holiday benefit, and so it went on. The last thing the minister wants is an update on those statistics before the election.

So we have a government that is not prepared to reveal the truth about what these laws are doing now. Interestingly, we have a government that did not reveal the truth of these laws before the last election. It is with a wry smile that I listen to the arguments of this government about how important its industrial relations changes have been for the economy. If they were that big a building block for the economy, why didn’t the government go out and argue that before the last election? Why didn’t it go out and say to Australians, ‘This is the thing that’s going to guarantee your future prosperity’? Why didn’t it argue the case? Because it knew that it could not win that argument. So the government covered it up before the last election, it is covering it up now, and it will cover up what it wants to do in the future.

We have here today the first anniversary of Work Choices. I will make this prediction: there will never be a second anniversary of Work Choices, because there are only two possibilities after the next election. Either Labor are elected and these laws are swept away—and we bring a new balance in industrial relations in this country that meets the needs of working families and also meets the needs of this country for higher productivity, high-growth, high-flexibility workplaces—or we can see this country re-elect the Howard government. In that case we will not be talking about Work Choices, as bad as it is; we will be talking about Work Choices 2. We will be talking about the content that was in this document before they blanked it out, the unfinished business. We will be talking about that, put into law. We will be talking about what Nick Minchin says when he goes to the HR Nicholls Society, what the constituency of this government in advocacy groups—Peter Hendy and people like him—says when those people go to the HR Nicholls Society, when they reveal their true plans because they believe they are amongst friends. It will not be Work Choices; it will be Work Choices plus, and that is why we need to get rid of the Howard government. (Time expired)

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon in response to the matter of public importance that has been raised by the opposition. I just want to restate the matter of public importance put forward by the opposition. It says:

The Government’s failure to establish the foundation for the long term prosperity of Australian families.

We just heard from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Her contribution was full of cliches, full of references to how the Labor Party have changed. If they have changed in this term of this government, why is it that they have opposed the reform of the tax system? Why is it that, at every point, they opposed the introduction of the GST, an essential reform that strengthened the economy, got taxes off businesses and, as a result of that, got taxes off our exports?

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is trying to portray herself and the Labor Party as a revolution, saying that there has been a major change and that this election is about a contest of ideas. We only have to look at their record—not only in government for 13 long, painful years for the Australian people and Australian families but in the 11 years since we have come to government—on what they have opposed. Every reform that this government has brought forward that will strengthen the economy and that is an essential element of laying down the foundations for a strong economy and support for families, the Labor Party have opposed.

Let us just have a look at some of their record in government—and it is important. Unemployment peaked under a Labor government, a Labor government that was driven by the ideology of a union movement that was right behind them all the way, and that is exactly what we will see should they ever be elected to the treasury bench of this parliament. Under a Labor government, unemployment rose to 11 per cent. It was as bad as it had been since the Great Depression. I was in this place on the other side of the parliament, and I remember seeing, as I returned to my electorate and when visiting many parts of Australia, those long unemployment queues. There was nothing more depressing than to see people out of work, with desperation on their faces, with the soup kitchens and the Salvation Army and charitable organisations trying to help those families that had been destroyed. Their lives had been destroyed because of the Labor government’s inability to manage the economy.

When we came to government, I will never forget it. During that election campaign in 1996, we wanted to find out from the Labor Party what the state of the budget was. The response at the time from the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, was that the budget was in surplus. We actually could not find out. The budget at that time was said to be in surplus. When we came to government, we found that it was not in surplus; it was in fact another $10 billion in deficit, which made it a $96 billion debt that we as a government had to address if we were to lay the foundations for a strong economy and opportunities for families to have security. That is why I reject the opposition’s matter of public importance today about ‘the government’s failure to establish the foundation for the long-term prosperity of Australian families’, because we have laid the foundations for the long-term prosperity of Australian families. That is exactly what we have done.

There could be nothing more devastating for a family than for the breadwinner of the family to come home and say, ‘I’ve lost my job.’ When we were under a Labor administration in Canberra there were thousands upon thousands of households in which no-one had a job. Let us look at what this government has done. We have not only created the strong economy and the environment for real job opportunities in Australia; we have also laid the foundations for the economy to continue to grow. Today, families are enjoying the lowest interest rates on their mortgage payments. What did we see under a Labor government? The interest rates were at 17 per cent, and some businesses were paying up to 25 per cent. That is the sort of record that we see whenever the Labor Party get hold of a treasury bench—wherever it is around Australia. If they ever got hold of the treasury bench here in Canberra, we would see a return to the old Labor Party.

Let us look at real wages growth since we came to government. Under our government, real wages growth is 17.9 per cent. What was it under the 13 years of Labor government? It was negative 1.7 per cent, and that was because of their industrial relations approaches. They did not have Work Choices, they had union agreements, so people could not negotiate. One person had to negotiate. That sort of mentality and attitude will continue to be part of the Labor Party’s approach to negotiation and to wages agreements while ever they have a connection to the unions of Australia. Much of Labor’s front bench have records of leading the unions not only in their own communities but at a national level. We know one thing for sure, and that is that the union leaders of Australia are desperate to make sure that the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, and his deputy toe the line when it comes to the policies that they will take to the next federal election.

Let us look at interest rates. What were the average interest rates under a Labor government? They were 12.75 per cent. I said earlier that they rose to a record of 17 per cent, but let us look at the average: 12.75 per cent. The average mortgage rate under a coalition government is 7.2 per cent. What has that meant for families—since that is the reference in the MPI that has been brought on by the opposition? It has meant, for families with an average mortgage of $225,000, that their repayments are down by some $459 per month. The coalition government have laid the foundations for prosperity not only for families but for all Australians, because of our good economic management and our commitment to making sure that we do what is right to establish a strong economy with real growth. We will ensure that the prosperity is shared by all Australians.

The other interesting thing, as we go to the next election, is the alliance that the Labor Party has with the Greens. We know already that the opposition environment spokesman, the member for Kingsford Smith, is promoting—behind the scenes, like so many of these back room deals—that there will be no new coalmines established in Australia. What does that mean for those families in the seat of Flynn in central Queensland? They do not have job security under a Labor Party. Those coalminers and their families would be hit hard if there were ever a return of the Labor government here in Canberra. A Labor government would not allow the development of new mines. In fact, in central Queensland right now—much of it is in my electorate—there are eight new mines under development. Those mines are going to create jobs and wealth for Australia. Those mines are going to lay down the prosperity for the coalmining families. Under a Labor government that is all at risk, because Labor governments are the wreckers of the economy.

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

I must say how surprised I am by the contribution of the member for Maranoa. He highlights how out of touch this government is, how much it lives in the past, how much it relies on spurious argument, and how much it relies on playing the person rather than addressing the very substantial policy issues that need to be addressed to secure the wellbeing of families and the wellbeing of Australia’s economy into the future.

I found it amazing that it was left to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to argue in defence of the government’s Work Choices legislation. The Prime Minister left in a hurry. He did not want to put his case, even though yesterday he said in parliament, ‘Working families have never been better off.’ Really? Tell that to the families out there, across the length and breadth of Australia. Tell them that they have never been better off when every day they tell us, as their elected representatives, how they are under financial pressure because of the impact of rising petrol prices, rising health costs and rising childcare costs. If the government think that working families have never been better off, that shows how out of touch they are.

The Prime Minister wants the Australian community to believe that our good economic fortune, as he puts it, is related to the introduction of Work Choices. You heard the Leader of the Opposition debunk that argument very substantially. He debunked the notion that Work Choices is linked to productivity improvements. Data shows that collective agreements lead to a much more harmonious and productive outcome than individual contracts. The Prime Minister fails to recognise that employment growth, which we all want—and we are happy that unemployment is falling—is the result of a huge resources boom and has nothing to do with the government’s regressive industrial relations agenda.

The families I represent tell me that their level of prosperity and their living standards are very largely determined by decent and fair arrangements in the workplace. The minister said that the Labor Party should look at policies that are compassionate. I think compassion resides on this side of the chamber, not with the minister and the Howard government. If they were truly compassionate, they would have an industrial relations system that guarantees a decent living wage that keeps up with inflation. They would have a system that guarantees decent minimum standards so that people do not fall through the cracks. They would guarantee decent compensation for people who work unsociable hours and have to leave their families in order to supplement their incomes, either on the weekend or on overtime arrangements. The government would ensure that their industrial relations system has a proper work and family life balance. They would ensure that workers are protected against unfair and unjust dismissal. They would ensure that we have family-friendly provisions available to all people, and they would continue to insist that women achieve equal pay for work of equal value.

That is the compassionate system that Labor has always stood for, and it is the system that is very much under attack by the Work Choices legislation. The brunt of that is being felt by families across Australia, and it is particularly being felt by people who are most vulnerable in the workplace—young people, women working on a casual or part-time basis and women in industries such as tourism and hospitality, where wage rates have been behind the average.

People that needed protection do not have it anymore. They have no guarantee of compassion under this regime that the minister tells us is nirvana—that it will produce flexibility—but he never tells you about the negative impacts. We all know from talking to people that the loss of overtime, the loss of penalty rates and no protection against job insecurity or unfair dismissals are issues that are important to the families that we represent. (Time expired)

Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to address this MPI debate today, albeit for a very limited time. I will start my remarks in the same way that the Leader of the Opposition commenced his. In his 15 or 20 minutes, his entire argument pivoted on an issue of arrogance. I must say I found that very breathtaking from the man who was so arrogant in this place today he even went as far as claiming the next election victory.

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

Ms George interjecting

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Gillard interjecting

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

Order! The member for Throsby and the member for Lalor were heard in silence!

Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I find it arrogant that the two people who were listened to in silence are not even prepared to listen to a counterargument. But we move on. The Prime Minister of Australia has much to be proud of. His government is responsible for economic reform and economic management that has strengthened Australia.

Graham Edwards (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary (Defence and Veterans' Affairs)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Edwards interjecting

Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are being interjected on by people who continue to support Labor Party rhetoric. They choose to conveniently ignore the fact that this country was left on a terrible footing when the Howard government came to office in March 1996. They conveniently overlook the unemployment rate, which exceeded nine per cent with more than one million people unemployed. They talk about the good times coming to an end. They are very fortunate to be in opposition and in parliament at a time when Australia is doing very well. The economic reforms of the last 20 years, not just the last 11, have been necessary to bring Australia and its economy to the position it is in today.

The Prime Minister made the point in question time that sensible economic reforms that were initiated by the Hawke and Keating governments were supported by the coalition. And so they should have been. The same cannot be said of today’s opposition, which at every opportunity has failed to jump the hurdle and support the economic reform that continues to place Australia in a competitive place in the world market.

The Howard government has taken Australia’s standard of living for its people from 13th in the OECD to eighth position. The economic reforms of the last 11 years have been absolutely critical in getting the budget into shape and people into work. Policies have been implemented that take the pressure off people’s budgets—interest rates—and also give more money back to people in their pockets through tax reform. Workplace relations reform was necessary and it is an absolutely key issue. Labor will wind back the clock. The words ‘roll back’ were used today and, just like the GST, the false claims of the Labor Party will be shown for what they are. They have consistently lied and fear has been peddled in the community.

I am pleased to report to the House that the community does not believe the Labor Party’s lies and false claims about Work Choices. Labor said there would be mass sackings but the opposite has occurred. In the order of 260,000 Australians have been able to find work, many of them for the first time. I am pleased to report that close to 90 per cent of those new jobs that were created are full-time jobs. This is giving families hope and an opportunity to plan for the future with confidence. In respect of the mistruths peddled by the Labor Party, and its claims today that the government is arrogant—which is the easiest claim for an opposition of whichever colour to make; it is cheap populism—unfortunately the facts are not on the Labor Party side. The Labor Party of late have been talking a lot about productivity. They say it in almost every breath now. We never heard it under the Beazley opposition but today, under the Rudd opposition, it is all about productivity. They can pronounce it but they do not understand it. (Time expired)

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

Order! The time allocated for this debate has expired.