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

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics industrial dispute figures? Are there risks to the level of industrial disputation in Australia?

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

I thank the member for Hasluck for his question. It is not surprising that he should demonstrate an interest in these matters. Not only does he have a very distinguished background in small business and an understanding of the sorts of economic policies that are needed for small business to flourish in Australia, but also he represents an electorate where the level of unemployment in March 1996 was 7.4 per cent and is now only 3.5 per cent. It is precisely an electorate like this—electorates like Hasluck, Stirling and other electorates in Western Australia—where the economic policies of this government have delivered such outstanding benefits over the last few years. The member for Hasluck asked me about the level of industrial disputes. I can inform him—

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

Mr Edwards interjecting

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

The member for Cowan is warned!

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

The March quarter industrial dispute figures were released last week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and they show the lowest level of industrial disputes ever recorded in Australia. I had previously been saying that they were the lowest since the year before the Great War broke out. They are in fact the lowest level ever recorded in Australia. That should be something of universal pride and universal satisfaction around the country. The figure is 0.8 working days lost per thousand employees. These figures have been kept since before World War I. In the March quarter, the construction industry recorded only 1.5 working days lost per thousand employees, and that compares with 32.8 per thousand employees. That is going from an unacceptably high level in that industry to virtually zero. Nobody can argue the veracity of these figures. Nobody on the other side can suggest that these figures are wrong. Is anybody on the other side saying that this is a bad development? Is anybody pretending that this is something they do not want?

In the face of the sounds of silence from other side, I might ask a rhetorical question: why on earth do you have a policy that would bring all of this to an end? That is essentially what the Labor Party are on about. These figures are further proof that the government’s workplace reforms have helped to keep the economy strong, and there is an enormous risk if the instructions contained in the dirty tricks manual—to which I have referred and the Treasurer has referred—are successful. Let there be no doubt: the goal of the ACTU is to restore the power of union bosses in this country. It is not to get a lower level of industrial disputes, because you cannot really get any lower than the figures I have mentioned. It is not to get a lower level of unemployment, because when Labor were last in office, unemployment was double what it is now. It is not to get higher real wage growth, because under us real wages have gone up by 20 per cent. The last time the unions ran the country, in the Hawke-Keating years, real wages actually went backwards. What the union movement wants is what Greg Combet candidly admitted when he addressed that rally in Adelaide. He said, ‘There was a time when the unions ran Australia, and it would be a good idea if those days were returned.’

They are using the present Leader of the Opposition. He is the proxy for the trade union movement. He is the patsy, the proxy, the delegate, the surrogate, of the union movement in order to achieve these objectives. But every aspect of Labor Party industrial relations policy is dictated by the union movement. The language is even the same. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has described the treatment of people under the building industry commission as akin to the treatment of terrorists. I thought that was original language, but I find in fact, when I have a look at the dirty tricks manual, that that is language that is employed in the dirty tricks manual. You go through that document again and again and you find a similarity of language. What this document reveals is the ruthless determination of the union bosses of this country to use deceit, dishonesty and misrepresentation to achieve their objective, and that is to run Australia again, through the courtesy of the puppet Leader of the Opposition.