Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The federal parliament has been debating industrial relations since the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, and one of the things that always characterises these debates is that the level of rhetoric from the Australian Labor Party is always completely out of whack with the legislation that we are discussing. While to a casual observer it might seem very difficult to explain this disconnect between the realities of the legislation and the Labor Party rhetoric, it is very simply explained by understanding the old rule that the Australian Labor Party is the parliamentary wing of the trade union movement. What school kids learn in Australian history is that the Australian Labor Party is the parliamentary wing of the trade union movement.

We have heard this before. The previous speaker, the member for Perth, the ‘Nostradamus kid’ of the Australian Labor Party, in October 1995 said:

The Howard model is quite simple. It is all about lower wages ...

Wrong.

... it is about worse conditions ...

Wrong.

... it is about a massive rise in industrial disputation ...

Wrong.

... it is about the abolition of safety nets ...

Wrong.

... and it is about pushing down or abolishing minimum standards.

Wrong. Let us take each of those claims, because we have now had the benefit of 10½ years since he made them. What have we seen? Firstly, real wages have risen by 16.8 per cent over the last 10 years. They have risen during the period that we have had the Workplace Relations Act 1996. We have seen conditions improved. We have seen unemployment fall from 8.2 per cent in March 1996 to five per cent now, the lowest level in almost 30 years. At the same time we have seen more than 100,000 Australians come off the numbers of the long-term unemployed. We have seen the creation of 1.7 million jobs—800,000 part-time jobs and 900,000 full-time jobs.

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