Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have seen yet again today another desperate attempt by Senator Wong, Senator Sterle and others to reignite the scare campaign that Labor have been waging over a number of years now—the scare campaign that they hope will propel them into government, but the scare campaign that Australians should not be fooled by. Towards the end of his remarks in this debate, Senator Sterle spoke of balance. This government has been working hard to get the question of balance right. It is a question of getting the balance right between protecting people in employment and providing jobs, and the economic environment necessary to provide those jobs. No amount of regulation—no amount in the world—creates jobs. The right economic environment is what creates jobs. That is what this government has been focusing on, in tandem with ensuring that we have enough protection for workers.

The results clearly speak for themselves, with more than two million jobs created under this government and employment at a record 10½ million Australians enjoying jobs today. They are the figures that matter. They are the results that have been delivered—more than 400,000 jobs since Work Choices was introduced. Despite all the scaremongering we hear from the other side of this chamber, some 84 per cent, 350,000, of the new jobs that have been created since Work Choices was introduced have been full-time jobs. So we are not seeing the plethora of new part-time opportunities or the casualisation of the workforce that those on the other side of the chamber claimed would occur. Instead, we have seen sustained, strong growth in full-time employment opportunities, which is certainly the most important thing we can do to provide a sound foundation and a sound footing for Australians, going into the future.

My colleague Senator Troeth outlined that the spurious claims being made by the opposition about the new fairness test are unfounded. We have introduced the fairness test in our quest to get the balance right—the balance that I spoke of earlier, between protecting workers rights and having the right economic framework. We have a system which is ensuring that all the AWAs are checked by the new authority and that they are detailed. The overwhelming majority of those that have been checked have been accepted.

The system we have introduced has created jobs and certainty. Contrast it with the system that Labor seeks to take us back to. That is a system that would reintroduce unfair dismissal laws and abolish the flexibility that this government delivered into the workplace. We risk those changes. There would be a reintroduction of unfair dismissal laws at the cost of some billions of dollars to the Australian economy.

Senator Sterle spoke of mandates. The other side of the chamber, time and again, voted against the abolition of unfair dismissal laws, no matter how many times this government—