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

Thank you, Mr President. I again thank Senator Lightfoot for the question and can confirm that the Howard government’s industrial relations system has got the balance right. It protects the rights of those Australians in work through the Workplace Ombudsman and, at the same time, it encourages the right conditions for employers to hire even more people, paying them even higher wages. Let us not forget that, despite what those on the other side say, under our industrial relations system you cannot—and I stress ‘cannot’—trade away such things as overtime penalty rates et cetera without receiving fair and adequate compensation. It is the law.

Let us not forget that, despite the predictable but false doomsday predictions of Labor and the unions, the new industrial relations system has brought not mass sackings but mass employment—in fact, over 360,000 new jobs, 97 per cent of them full time—and real wages continue to go up. Those on the other side also predicted a massive increase in trade union membership because of our laws. In fact, membership has slumped even further. Now less than 20 per cent of the workforce chooses to join a union. What have the unions done in response? They run their dishonest campaigns and get their puppets in the Labor Party to promise to rip up our balanced laws and take us back to the 1970s or 1950s. Over recent months we have seen Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard playing a ‘get tough on the unions’ charade and picking pretend fights with the unions. Let us analyse this. They have expelled Dean Mighell for swearing, yet they refuse to expel Joe McDonald for thuggery. They are about to expel Mr Quick MP for telling the truth, yet they are not going to act against Kevin Harkins for having engaged in unlawful behaviour, as determined by a royal commission.

It really is all a Rudd charade—a charade exposed by this leak from the Finance Sector Union. This came from Labor headquarters and it tells Labor candidates how to respond to trade union inquiries. It tells Labor candidates to say, ‘The key principles in Labor’s industrial relations policy are similar to those outlined in the policy adopted by the ACTU congress in 2006.’ They are Rudd’s weasel words. What they are saying is, ‘If elected, Labor will do whatever the unions want.’ They will abolish AWAs—Senator Lightfoot from Western Australia would be most concerned about that—and we would once again have unrestricted right of entry for union thugs like Joe McDonald and Kevin Harkins into Australian workplaces. As soon to be Labor senator Doug Cameron said earlier this year, all the unions want is the defeat of the Howard government and to have the Labor Party implement the ACTU’s policy. Very simply, Mr Rudd will do what is in the interests of the union bosses. The Howard government will continue to do what is in the interests of the working families of this country and what is in the national interest.