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

You don’t want to talk about it. The Labor Party do not want to talk about that because it undermines their dishonest campaign when our industrial relations changes have seen the lowest rate of industrial disputation since records were first kept in this country—the lowest rate. There has also been a 20 per cent increase in real wages under 11 years of the Howard government, whereas, under 13 years of Labor, they were only able to deliver about 1.8 per cent. That is the compare and contrast.

Whilst Labor presided over one million of their fellow Australians on the unemployment socioeconomic scrap heap, we now have it down to 4.3 per cent—a figure that not even the Labor Party or, indeed, our most keen supporters would have agreed that we could have achieved. But we have achieved that result. Why? Because one of the hallmarks of the Howard-Costello government has been its willingness to take the tough decisions for the long-term benefits. Before those who are sitting over there get a bit too excited about that, they might like to check their wires in relation to what is happening in Queensland.

The reality is that these reports unfortunately do the Labor Party no credit. What they show is that, if Labor were ever to be given the privilege of governing this country, they would surround themselves with pseudoacademics from the trade union movement to try to spin their story when the facts, the raw numbers and the objective data clearly show more Australians are in work than ever before, they have increased wages like never before and they are in circumstances where industrial disputation is at the lowest level ever experienced by this country. So much for the industrial disharmony that the Labor Party asserts exists.