Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I know the Australian Labor Party do not like hearing the evidence not only of the Australian Bureau of Statistics but also of workers—workers such as Graeme, a Queensland coalminer who is earning more than $100,000 a year on his Australian workplace agreement. Today in the Australian he said:

The system works. If a person is prepared to work, he keeps his job ...

Or how about Jason, a mill operator, who is on an AWA and earning more than $70,000 per annum? Today he said:

It is a pretty sweet deal ... I don’t have any problems negotiating directly with the people who employ me—and I really don’t think many people do.

That is pretty clear, you would have to say. But today, typical of the Labor Party and union campaign, they yet again rolled out their favourite union bard and chorister, Mr Peetz, singing the same tired old Labor tune. Could I simply suggest that, when the people of Australia have a choice between Mr Peetz or the Australian Bureau of Statistics, they might go for the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Senator Mason also asked me about alternative policies. Unfortunately for Australians who want a job, who want to earn more money and who want more flexibility, the instruments that more than anything else have allowed that to happen, AWAs, will be abolished under Labor. I remind the Senate and suggest to those opposite, before they engage in their affected jeering, that in October 2005 their very own leader said:

There will be a million of those things—

AWAs—

in place when we come into office, and you can’t wander round cancelling contracts.

Yet, all of a sudden, after a secret meeting with Unions New South Wales, you can rip them up. Talk about flip-flop. Talk about weak leadership. It is a desperate bid by Mr Beazley to ensure that his own employment contract with the Labor caucus is not ripped up. That is the reason he is doing what he is doing. And in so doing—in protecting his own job—he is willing to sacrifice the hard-earned wage increases and extra jobs that have been won by so many of our fellow Australians. (Time expired)