David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

One has to wonder about how much sincerity the opposition brings to this debate. We see that Mr Combet and Ms Burrow maintain that there will be a fresh round of campaigns against the Work Choices legislation. This Labor opposition is bought and sold by the trade union movement of this country. Not only do they provide the money for the Australian Labor Party to survive; they provide the positions for union hacks to fill in this parliament. They are all from the trade union movement. What independent parliamentary contribution can they possibly make in those circumstances? They are the worst example of people hostage to a minority pressure group in our great country. They are bought and sold by the Australian trade union council. They have received $50 million from unions since 1996.

The facts are that under 13 years of Labor real wages for working men—their union membership; their constituency—went up 1.2 per cent, and Mr Keating proclaimed that as a wonderful thing; 1.2 per cent. Senator Campbell’s answer, if I can anticipate, will be: ‘It’s a lie.’ What else could he say when confronted by the facts. Real wages under the Howard government since 1996 have gone up 16.8 per cent for workers, for union members, for blue-collar workers in our great country. The Howard government has created 1.7 million new jobs since March 1996.

I want to take a moment to look at the mining industry in Western Australia. We produce world-class minerals and mineral processed products in Western Australia in iron ore, base metals, precious metals and rare earth minerals because every one of those companies has Australian workplace agreements. They are efficient. They are effective and—guess what?—the workers have never received so much in wages. Of course, this absolutely irks the Australian Labor Party and the union movement. They like the collective bargaining scheme that is straight out of Moscow. That is the way they like things. One size fits all—it does not matter how good you are, you get the same pay as the dill next door to you.

The essence of their message in all of this is: we do not want productivity; we want uniformity. Work Choices and the new reforms in the workplace brought to us by Minister Andrews mean that—and I have seen this first-hand, for senators’ benefit—we have got rid of the ‘go away money’ mentality in terms of unfair dismissal for small business. Let us take an example that I saw: a drycleaner has a person who is negligent and causes him to carry a number of claims on his insurance to the point of making the business almost not viable, so he dismisses the person who is not doing the job properly. You go along to the Industrial Arbitration Commission and the first thing a union advocate says is: ‘I want five grand, 10 grand, and we’ll walk away.’ That is outrageous in this country. That is an abuse of power. That is the sort of thing that the opposition in this place want to protect and want to facilitate. I say: enough is enough. If you cannot do the job properly, you do not deserve the job and there are other people who will step in, do the right thing, appreciate the job and earn a decent living.