Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

Regarding a previous remark that I made, Minister, I cannot remember exactly what I said but you thought that I had said that the High Court had granted the power. I am obviously aware that the High Court does not grant a power; they confirmed a power and enlarged it, in my view. That was the view of two of the minority judges, and I agree with them. That is where we are.

Returning to the nature of the debate, the minister’s job is to talk up the benefits of the Work Choices legislation. Minister, I want to ask a question that you might consider taking on notice, because I very much doubt that you will have the information available right now. As I understand the minister, the minister has claimed that 200,000 jobs have been created as a result of Work Choices—not since Work Choices but as a result of the introduction of the Work Choices legislation. My understanding is that somewhere between a quarter and a third of all employees are still under state industrial relations law. Perhaps the government could confirm whether that is so and be specific about how many are under laws which are not the Work Choices law. Secondly, I understand that there is a substantial swathe of workers still under transitional arrangements. In other words, they are under certified agreements and other industrial instruments which are still subject to the pre Work Choices regime. Therefore, it would seem to me that perhaps a minority or perhaps a small majority of all employees in Australia are not yet affected by Work Choices. Can you tell us how many workers fall under Work Choices in each state and how many do not, bearing in mind the fact that many people are still on transitional arrangements?

Following on from that, once all those people have been through their transitional arrangements, how many more jobs will that create? As I understand it, you are saying that as soon as people move on to Work Choices large numbers of extra jobs are created. I would like to know how many extra jobs will be created when those people move out of the pre Work Choices regime into the Work Choices regime. The minister knows what I am on about. Essentially, my belief is that you are entitled to say that your changes to law are assisting the creation of jobs. My difficulty is that I do not think that you are entitled to say that Work Choices has created 200,000 jobs. Many other circumstances come into play there. The point has been made that in some of the states, such as New South Wales, there are actually negative effects on job creation at present. But I would like to know the actual figures. If the minister was able to refer that to the department and provide that in due course, I would be grateful.