Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There will be no working for less. Senator Sterle interrupted from the other side to say that wages will be cut. In real terms, wages have increased by some 16.8 per cent. In your time in government, there were 13 years under the centralised, fixed system, where all bargaining was collective and was controlled by the unions. It was a centralised industrial relations system that locked out individual workers’ choices and simply had the bosses and their lawyers tramping off to the Industrial Relations Commission to make deals with the unions and their lawyers. What were the results of that? Even Paul Keating, in the dying days of his prime ministership, was ready to reject that sort of system. The results were clear: in 13 years real wages increased by 1.3 per cent. That is a pitiful result for the people whom you purport to represent. What was the unemployment rate? Do you think the centralised system helped those workers during a recession? No, it did not. There were one million unemployed—a record in this country. It is a disgraceful record.

But I can tell you what did protect those workers during the Asian downturn and other economic bumps this government has seen during in its 10 years in office: a very flexible industrial relations system and a government that is disciplined in its economic management. All of these reforms tie into each other, and Australian workers are not going to fall for your old GST stunts that failed or your first industrial relations reform stunts that failed. When are you going to learn? Are you just going to settle into opposition and run the same old tactics on every major reform, knowing that they are in the national interest but rejecting them for opposition’s sake? You are in opposition for opposition’s sake. You are getting far too comfortable across there. You are coming in here, running pathetic little scare campaigns. You must know by now that the Australian people are awake up to them. You are finished! (Time expired)