Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to take note of the answers from Senator Eric Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and to respond to Senator Wong and the other opposition senators. The opposition made two simple claims about Work Choices. They said that jobs would decrease and that wages would be cut as a result of Work Choices. It is not rocket science. They ran a campaign, publicly and privately, using union money. Since 1996, $47 million of union money has been provided to and expended by the Labor Party, and they have been promised another $20 million in the lead-up to the next election. Of course, he who pays the piper calls the tune. We know who your masters are. You are obviously doing the bidding of the union movement. We know it. It is on the public record.

The opposition made those claims about Work Choices in this parliament and outside. And what happened? Let us have a look at what has happened as a result of Work Choices coming in on 27 March this year. There has been a record increase in jobs. We have the lowest unemployment in 30 years, at 4.6 per cent. We have 165,000 new jobs since Work Choices came in. So the number of jobs has not gone down. Why don’t the opposition come in here and admit their mistake and say, ‘I’m sorry for misleading the Australian public,’ and apologise to Australians? In particular, they should apologise to those Australians who have new jobs—those 165,000 people, 129,000 of whom have full-time jobs—and say, ‘I’m sorry; I was wrong.’ You got it wrong. With respect to wages, you said wages would go down. What has happened since Work Choices and what has happened under the Howard government since 1996? I will tell you what has happened: wages have gone up in real terms by 16.5 per cent.