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

Once again we have the Australian Labor Party, through Senator Marshall, seeking to misrepresent the wonderful impact of Work Choices on the Australian community. The wonderful impact has been the creation of over 200,000 new jobs—compared to the situation which Labor presided over when they were in government where one million of our fellow Australians were on the social scrap heap of unemployment. In relation to the specifics of this matter, I understand that the Commonwealth Bank have said this: ‘We have been offering AWAs to our staff since 1997’—some nine years now; and of course the Work Choices legislation only got through in March of this year—‘so staff on an AWA get a higher salary—