Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hasluck for his question. I note that every Australian workplace is different and, therefore, Work Choices is delivering the flexibility for individual businesses and employees to choose the type of agreement which best suits their workplace. This is borne out by the data from the Office of the Employment Advocate about the take-up of agreements over the past six months. Of the new agreements since Work Choices came into operation on 27 March this year, 70 per cent of workers are covered by collective agreements and 30 per cent of workers are covered by individual agreements.

Unfortunately, the Labor Party has been unwilling to acknowledge the real benefits for Australians covered by Work Choices. For months we have had the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party running around this country maintaining that collective agreements would not exist under Work Choices, despite the real evidence otherwise. What we see after six months is 70 per cent of workers covered by collective agreements and 30 per cent covered by individual agreements.

Even last night the member for Perth was maintaining this denial. He said, ‘Collective agreements signed since the introduction of the government’s industrial relations legislation are despite the laws, not because of them.’ That reminds me: we used to have one rooster who used to crow that real money was not real. We now have the other rooster claiming that real agreements are not real. We had the spectacle over the weekend, when the Labor Party in South Australia refused to allow non-union members of the media to cover—

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