Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Ian Macdonald for that very good question. As Senator Ian Macdonald well knows, today is the first anniversary of our Work Choices reforms and, as Senator Abetz noted, in the first year under Work Choices we have had some tremendous results: 263,000 new jobs, real wages up in one year by 1½ per cent—more than was achieved in 13 years of Labor—and the lowest level of industrial disputation since records commenced in 1913.

We have to look at Work Choices in terms of the economy as a whole. Under our government, the Australian economy has achieved its longest ever run of continuous expansion. We are experiencing unprecedented rises in real incomes. In the past, strong economic growth and high commodity prices inevitably led to rising inflation, wages break-outs and a boom-bust cycle. As the result of our reforms, we have secured and sustained our current economic strength without those consequences that inevitably used to be the case. Those reforms include the independent Reserve Bank, which was opposed by Labor; they include the medium-term fiscal strategy, aimed at keeping the budget in balance over the economic cycle and keeping pressure off inflation and interest rates; and they include the elimination of all government debt and an increase in our national competitiveness through privatisation, waterfront reform and tax reform. All of these things were opposed by the Labor Party.

Most importantly, our ongoing workplace relations reforms since 1996 have been critical to underpinning our extraordinary run of prosperity. Without that workplace flexibility, productivity would inevitably suffer because we would have the old days of centralised tribunals dictating workplace practices in individual firms. Without legal sanctions against secondary boycotts, we would see a return to union inspired wildcat industrial disputes, further undermining our productivity and our reliability as an exporter. And if we had the return of unfair dismissal laws we would see again the reluctance of small businesses to hire new staff, just as we saw before the introduction of Work Choices.

With Labor’s proposed return to union dominated pattern bargaining, we would see wage rises in strong sectors of the economy like mining flowing through to other sectors of the economy that cannot afford them, inevitably resulting in widespread unemployment. That is exactly what happened in the previous commodity price boom of the 1970s and it is exactly what happened when a certain Labor senator was in charge of the metalworkers union, resulting in mass unemployment in his union.

In the current economic climate, it really would be a recipe for general wage pressures, inflation, higher interest rates and job losses if we followed that path. And yet with incredible timing, on the first anniversary of Work Choices, what does Labor do but reveal that its industrial relations platform is all about the return of unfair dismissal laws for small business, a preference for pattern bargaining, the scrapping of secondary boycott protections and a return to centralised industrial relations with tribunals interfering in workplace relations in individual workplaces. The Labor Party, just like the Australian people, face a stark choice. You can have either this union-inspired industrial agenda or a continuation of low unemployment, low inflation and strong economic growth, but you cannot have both.