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

On these statistics, I will repeat what I said at Senate estimates: statistics are a bit like skimpy bathers—what they show is interesting; what they hide is vital. But might I say that in Senator Sterle’s case I doubt whether it would be either interesting or vital. But, that aside, you can make the statistics say what you want and you can say penalty rates were taken away. But there were wage increases in lieu, and to only paint half the picture is to tell a falsehood to the Australian people.

We also got the hoary old argument that we had removed fairness from the legislation—that the word ‘fair’ used to be in the preamble and its removal meant that we no longer believed in fairness. The old preamble did not have the word ‘harmonious’ in it; the new preamble does. So, if you accept the Australian Labor Party logic, the old act did not seek to create harmonious workplaces and the new one does. That sort of immature use of semantics is, unfortunately, the depths to which the Labor Party has had to sink to try to get an argument to fly with in this debate.

If you were to ask a worker, ‘Do you want a fair workplace?’ they would say yes. If you asked, ‘Do you want a harmonious workplace?’ they would say yes. Then if you asked the worker, ‘What do you think the difference is between a fair and a harmonious workplace?’ I reckon they would be left, like me, scratching their head wondering what the difference was. Of course, it is the same terminology to express the same sort of thing. We are about harmonious workplaces, and it is clear that is what we are delivering because industrial disputation under the Howard government is now at the lowest rate it has ever been since records were first kept. If workers are so much worse off under the Howard government, why is it that the rate of industrial disputation has fallen, like unemployment has fallen, and the only thing that has risen has been real wages, something that 13 years of Labor could never deliver?

There are other people in this debate. They will undoubtedly continue and follow the line of their leader, Mr Beazley, and Senator Wong and mislead and misrepresent this legislation. But at the end of the day these regulations are designed to put in place the Work Choices legislation—legislation that will ensure that the Australian economy and the people of Australia can prosper. Without the economy prospering, individual Australians cannot and will not prosper. We do not pursue economic reform because we are committed to economic reform per se; it is what economic reform can do for our fellow individual Australians, and that is to make a better life for them. The best social welfare policy a government can deliver is to ensure that every one of our fellow Australians that is capable of undertaking a job actually has one.

Mr Beazley said that the reform lemon of industrial relations had been squeezed dry and no more could be done. In other words, he was happy to have long-term losers on the unemployment benefit, and he admitted as much on TV. We say that is not good enough. Every single Australian deserves a job. We are very pleased that unemployment has now fallen below 4.9 per cent and we look forward to many more of our fellow Australians getting jobs as a result of Work Choices.