John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Every country that maintains the rigid, regulated IR system that Labor is now unequivocally committed to has higher levels of unemployment than do the countries that embrace the sort of policy that we believe in. It is no secret that Australia, Great Britain, the United States and New Zealand, with less regulated labour markets, have lower levels of unemployment than countries such as Germany, France and other nations of Europe.

If you want to reregulate the Australian labour market, go ahead and do so, and realise that as a result you will drive tens of thousands of extra Australians onto the dole queues. I remind those opposite who fulminate with moral outrage that in the early 1990s you had all the regulation in the world, yet you drove a million Australians onto the dole queues, you saw their living standards drag and you saw their aspirations belted to smithereens by the economic downturn that your industrial relations policy did nothing to stop. We have changed these laws because we believe—and we have sound evidence to support it through the experience of other countries—that a freer labour market and greater flexibility in relation to hiring and so forth of people will result in higher levels of employment. That is the evidence and that is the reason why we have taken our decision.

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