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

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister’s statement last night concerning Work Choices, where the Prime Minister said that Work Choices:

... was a big change but people believed in it. If you go through the speeches over the years of people like the Treasurer and others, they believe very strongly in IR reform ...

Will the Prime Minister confirm that his gov-ernment’s Work Choices laws still, firstly, allow award conditions like redundancy to be stripped away without a cent of com-pensation and, secondly, allow hard-working Australians to be unfairly dismissed for no reason and with no remedy?

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

I will start my answer to that question by confirming that the policy enunciated by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition provides for flexibility clauses in awards that will allow the trading away of penalty rates and overtime without any guarantee of compensation in return.

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

Try reading the policy.

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

I have read it. That is your problem—I have read it. Work Choices was a big change and it was a very desirable change. It was the subject of a ferocious fear campaign by the unions. I notice that that ad that represents a board meeting with businessmen talking about penalty rates and overtime says that it is perfectly legal to take those away without anything in return. That is untrue. It is not legal to do that and it has not been legal to do that, as a result of the fairness test. That does not trouble the trade union movement of Australia. It does not trouble the Labor Party.

What really matter are outcomes. If I look at the Australian labour market now and back when Work Choices was introduced, what do I find? I find that there are 370,000 more people in jobs. I find that 85 per cent of those additional 370,000 jobs are full time. I find that wages have risen and continue to rise, so much so that they are now 21 per cent higher in real terms—that is, 21 per cent above the rate of inflation. In other words, their wages have gone up with inflation and they have got 21 per cent on top of that since March 1996. The other thing I also find is that strikes are at their lowest level since 1913.

If the Leader of the Opposition had watched my interview on The 7.30 Report last night, which apparently he did—or maybe Hawker Britton watched it and gave him a briefing paper on it—then he would have seen, or Hawker Britton would have seen, that I said that one of the goals of the coalition in the next term of government, if we are returned by the Australian people, is that for the first time we might be able to have a full employment economy.

The Canadian Prime Minister mentioned at lunchtime today—or it might have been in his speech; I forget which—an anecdote involving one of my predecessors in this office, Joseph Benedict Chifley. A true Labor man was Joseph Benedict Chifley—he was a very true Labor man.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He nationalised the banks.

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

Yes, he tried to nationalise the banks. One of the things that Chifley made after the end of the Second World War was a full employment pledge to the workers of Australia. He believed in the social justice of full employment. It strikes me as passing strange that a party, one of whose former prime ministers, Ben Chifley, believed in full employment, is the party that has an industrial relations policy that is going to destroy the potential of this country to be a nation of full employment over the next three years.

One of the great advantages of our policy has been to drive down unemployment. One of the consequences of the policy of the Leader of the Opposition would be that unemployment, so far from remaining at a 33-year low, will rise, because if you bring back the unfair dismissal laws you will rob small business of the incentive to take on more staff. That will have a deleterious effect on unemployment. Far from full employment being a social justice goal of the Australian Labor Party, it will be something that only a coalition government can deliver.