Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. What impact have Australian workplace agreements had on hardworking Australians?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. There appears to be some confusion amongst some members of the House about the impact of Australian workplace agreements and Work Choices on hardworking Australians. The member for North Sydney last night said that former cabinet ministers of the Howard government did not know about the impact of AWAs on hardworking families. I note the shadow minister for foreign affairs disagreed with this view on radio this morning, where he said:

I heard what Joe said. I don’t know whether … how true that was. But, you know, certainly I led the task force there for six months and certainly I understood that the removal of the no disadvantage test did expose us, and the community were on to it very quickly.

So there is confusion amongst the opposition about the impact of Australian workplace agreements. Can I help the opposition with that confusion, because the opposition, when in government, deliberately decided not to collect information on what Australian workplace agreements were doing to hardworking families. They knew that those results would be bad, so they preferred not to ask any questions that they did not want the answers to.

We did have some samples in May 2006; they came out in Senate estimates. Then the clamper went on—no more information was to come out. The government did sample AWAs between March 2006 and May 2007. To the extent that that analysis got into the public domain, it was there because it leaked. In particular, a sample of over 1,000 AWAs was leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald. Today I can confirm what the results were for that complete sample of 1,700 Australian workplace agreements. These are actual results. I note that the former government denied the figures in the Sydney Morning Herald leak. They will not be able to deny these figures, because these are the actual results. Of the 1,700 Australian workplace agreements that were sampled, 89 per cent removed at least one protected award condition, 83 per cent excluded two or more protected award conditions, 52 per cent excluded six or more—that is more than half—and of course the list goes on.

When we are talking about protected award conditions, we are talking about the things that the very expensive propaganda told people were protected by law but could still be taken away without compensation. In these agreements, we know that they were stripped away. What was excluded? What were the sorts of things that got stripped away? We know that the things that are basic to the take-home pay of Australians got stripped away. Shift loadings were excluded in 70 per cent of agreements, annual leave loading was excluded in 68 per cent of agreements and penalty rates were excluded in 63 per cent of agreements. This is the truth that the Howard government covered up in the run-up to the election.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order going to relevance. The Deputy Prime Minister has not stated the salary increases that people got as a result of these award conditions.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The deputy leader will resume her seat. She knows that a point of order is not an invitation to come to the dispatch box and debate.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course, these questions from the former Howard ministers are fatuous because they deliberately decided, in government, to not do this analysis because they did not want to know the results. They deliberately decided they did not want to analyse the dimension of the rip-off of Australian working families. We should also note that these are the people who deliberately decided not to release any economic modelling of Work Choices. They did not want that information out there.

We are in a situation today where hardworking Australians are still caught by Work Choices. We are trying to get rid of Australian workplace agreements, in accordance with our policy and the election mandate of the Australian people. That is why we introduced last week the transition bill. What has been the answer, given these shocking statistics, in this parliament of the opposition to that bill’s introduction? Well, really, we have got confusion, but what we know that they have actually done is extend the Senate inquiry in order to keep Work Choices going on as long as possible. Whatever they say about amendments, whatever they say about not opposing, whatever they say about five-year transitional agreements and them lasting to 2012 or 2017—they do not seem to know—whatever they say about those things, the thing that they have achieved is the continuation of the Australian workplace agreements that these shocking statistics come from. The one thing that should happen today in light of these shocking statistics is that the opposition, in all of its confusion and division, should say, ‘What we will do today is we will agree with Labor that this bill will be through the House and through the Senate before Easter.’ That will enable a Senate inquiry on the same timetable that the parliament last had when workplace relations laws were dealt with by this parliament. This opposition should get people out of the clutches of Work Choices. In delaying that, all it is doing is reinforcing its reputation as the Work Choices party.