Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and Financial Services and Superannuation. Minister, how is the government helping to create good jobs and fairer workplaces, and what are the obstacles to this?

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for her question. Like all of Labor, she supports a plan for jobs and growth, as does our Fair Work Act. It is good to get a chance to talk about what the Fair Work Act is delivering in terms of helping Australian workplaces. I can report to the House that business investment in Australia is up. One in every $5 in the Australian economy is business investment. I can report to the House a 25 per cent increase in the number of new companies registered since the Fair Work Act laws have been in place.

I can also report that, whilst the Fair Work Act laws have been in place, the ASX has climbed 17.9 per cent. Interest rates are down. There is reasonable wages growth in Australia, but it is moderate. The number of apprentices and trainees is up. The number of Australians completing higher-level qualifications is up. Indeed, unemployment is steady.

I am also pleased to report that productivity has been up for the last nine quarters and also, despite the myth-making from the coalition, the average days lost due to industrial action under Labor is half to one third of what it was under the coalition. So I think that any reasonable objective judgement about the role of the Fair Work laws that our Prime Minister brought into place when she was the minister for employment, shows that they are working.

But there are obstacles to this, as I have been asked by the member for La Trobe, I am afraid to say. The obstacles in fact are the coalition. Unfortunately, I have to say in putting forward this proposition that the coalition are an obstacle to better workplace laws—have a look at the voting record when they come here. Thursday a week ago, to my disappointment I might add, they voted against new laws to protect people against workplace bullying. They voted against family-friendly provisions to request leave. And to complete a trifecta, they voted against roster protection. All this comes on top of the opposition leader's proposition that he wants to introduce a great big new tax on 3½ million Australian workers where they pay tax on their superannuation contributions because they earn less than $37,000.

Unfortunately, it is not only their voting record here; it is their actions elsewhere when they get into power. I have never seen a state coalition government who does not like to fight with their ambulance officers, with their firefighters, with their teachers or with their nurses. The coalition, whenever they get to power, are genetically disposed to attacking their own employees.

Of course it does not just stop at their actions or their voting record. Have a look at the instructions that the coalition are receiving here in this place from elsewhere. The cat was belled again today in the pages of TheAustralian by none other than Premier Denis Napthine who basically accused the opposition of not going far enough on industrial relations. That is what you will get if the coalition is successful on 14 September: individual contracts at the heart of workplace relations under the coalition.