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

and employees, if they wish, should be able to negotiate. Under this government, both employers and employees have more freedom of choice than they did under the former government. If the Labor Party were to win the next election, it is obvious that the Leader of the Opposition, from what he has said over the weekend and today, would be hell-bent on going back to a situation where managers will be denied the right to manage their own businesses. That is a recipe for reducing the entrepreneurial spirit of this country. It is a recipe for returning to the days when real wages hardly moved at all. I say not only to workers employed by a particular company but, indeed, to workers all around Australia: look at how your real wages have increased under this government and compare that with what happened when presumably you were living in the nirvana of the workers under the former Labor government. There is no comparison.

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