Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak tonight on the first anniversary of the Work Choices legislation and to comment partly on the legislation itself and partly on what we have observed since it was introduced and before it was introduced. We have seen a massive and unprecedented campaign of fear on the part of those who seem to be threatened by the substantial economic reform which Work Choices represents. Looking at the campaign of fear launched against this piece of legislation, which the coalition government has taken to four successive elections as the centrepiece of its promises to the Australian community on reform of the workplace and the economy, we have seen a series of moves reminiscent of the smear and fear campaign launched a number of years ago against the GST. There are a number of similarities between the two campaigns. As it was with the GST campaign, Labor pinned its hopes on this campaign to defeat the legislation.

The problems predicted by Labor over the GST of course never eventuated. The term ‘roll-back’ these days is usually confined to supermarkets. The reality of what actually happened with the GST blew Labor’s scare campaign out of the water. I remember the day when the GST finally occurred in 2000. People were expecting a thunderbolt in their shops and supermarkets, and they came away saying, ‘That wasn’t as bad as we were led to believe.’ I think that the same thing is happening today with respect to Work Choices. Not every citizen of Australia gets to experience firsthand the changes in the industrial landscape: people not in the workforce, people whose employment has not changed, people who have not had any change in their industrial circumstances or work conditions—none of these people are actually directly affected by these changes.

The fact is that when you scratch below the surface—or when you dig deep below the surface—you have to go a long way before you find people who have been adversely affected by these changes. We are told relentlessly in Labor’s smear campaign—in their ads and the ads of their fellow travellers, the trade union movement—that there are whole cohorts of Australian citizens who have been badly affected by these changes. Where are they?

Let us go back to the start of the anti Work Choices campaign. There were ads running in newspapers and on television—ads featuring citizens who had been chewed up and spat out by this vile new system of industrial relations which took people’s rights away. The Office of Workplace Services, as part of its charter, conducted investigations into those cases. It found that the cases were for the most part exaggerated. It found that those people had in fact been dismissed for other reasons in some cases. It found that there was no substance to the claims that had been made in most cases.

So the ACTU moved on to a different sort of ad campaign, one that did not make the mistake of featuring real cases and real people; it featured actors. In the cases that we have seen on television recently, the people who are supposedly being abused by the system are in fact actors. That very expressive woman, holding the child, whose face appeared in the ads in the New South Wales election campaign, if I am not mistaken, is an actor. The fact of the matter is that it is very hard for Labor and the trade union movement to find real people prepared to come forward and say, ‘I have lost something by virtue of these changes in the industrial landscape.’

The hard evidence of what has occurred in the Australian community is basically positive. We have seen a growth in employment. In my territory, unemployment over the last 12 months has fallen from 3.1 per cent to 2.8 per cent; 2.8 per cent of people seeking work are unable to find work. At the same time there has been an increase of five per cent in the number of residents who are actually involved in the workforce, to 189,500. Most of those jobs that have been created are full time. Twelve thousand people in the ACT have signed AWAs since Work Choices was introduced, and it is no coincidence that that flexibility in the ACT workplace has been accompanied by a decrease in unemployment and an increase in participation in the workforce.

The raw evidence is very strong: a rise in real wages by 1.5 per cent, falling unemployment, rising job opportunities and falling industrial disputation since Work Choices was introduced. Doesn’t that suggest that there is something wrong with a campaign that focuses only on what has gone wrong? Something has gone right over the last 12 months with these changes. Something has created opportunities for 263,000 Australians who have a reason to get up in the morning—to go to work—a reason they did not have 12 months ago. The fact is that the macro picture is very good, but I accept that there are others who will focus on the micro picture, on individual cases, and try to find fault.

I mentioned the ad campaign that has shifted from real cases to cases presented by actors. A few months ago we had unions portraying the redundancy dispute at Tristar in Sydney as being caused by Work Choices. It was looked at more closely and it was discovered that the law that was applied by Tristar to take the steps that it took in the cases against those workers was a law which predated not only Work Choices but also the Howard government. It was a law that was decades old which presumably operated during the life of the previous Labor government.

In the ACT’s case, there were examples found last year of workers in the hospitality industry who were being underpaid. Senator Lundy came out and said this was due to Work Choices. Those cases were examined by the Office of Workplace Services and it was discovered that, first of all, there was a fairly widespread problem with underpayment in the hospitality industry in the ACT and, second, that those patterns of underpayment long preceded the beginning of Work Choices. In fact, they go back quite a few years. It is regrettable, but it clearly does not relate to Work Choices. Senator Lundy then made the claim that these were examples of people abusing the 457 visa system to bring in migrant workers and underpay them. It is true that some such cases have been discovered, and prosecutions have been launched in at least one or two of these cases. But, again, the number of people being underpaid greatly extends beyond those who are migrant workers under 457 visas. Again claims about Work Choices were not borne out.

We know that it is a strong economy that underpins jobs growth and increased investment in social services. Economic reform is not only compatible with social justice; it is essential for social justice. It is essential to create opportunities. We believe that the best form of assistance we can give to people who are in economic difficulty is to provide them, first of all, with jobs and, secondly, with jobs where real wages are growing—that is, where their capacity to buy things as a result of having those jobs exceeds the rate at which the general cost of living rises. That is what we have delivered. We have delivered it very particularly with Work Choices.

If the unions have a case to make against Work Choices, let them bring it forward. Let them give us chapter and verse on who has been hurt by this process. The fact that some individuals no longer have certain conditions, such as holidays, in their employment contracts is beside the point. Some people do not want those conditions in their agreements. Some people want flexibility in their arrangements. They do not want a template that is applied irrespective of their personal position or the nature and circumstances of their workplace. They want the ability to say, ‘This is what suits me,’ and work towards that. That has been the case particularly, I might say, in the ACT, where workers have a high degree of sophistication and have been able to engineer very good outcomes in their contracts. This of course is a marketplace that understands that. But, if there are other marketplaces where people have been disadvantaged, again, let those cases be brought forward. The fact is that we have seen a revolution—(Time expired)