Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am certainly pleased to rise in opposition to the motion that the member for Cunningham has put forward to the House today. Like many motions that come from the opposition, the problem is that this is a motion that it is heavy on rhetoric but exceptionally light on fact. We heard that with both the contribution from the member for Cunningham and the contribution we just heard from the member for Calwell. If you look at the specific limbs in the member for Cunningham’s motion, I must say there is only one that I would agree with—that is, the recognition of the contribution Australian women make to workplaces and households across the country. We would universally support that proposition.

But when you delve into the facts of the other propositions in the motion put forward by the Australian Labor Party as being the negative impact of the introduction of the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, you find that they highlight how absolutely misleading and deceptive the Australian Labor Party is being once again with this motion when it comes to Australian Work Choices legislation. Limb 5 of the motion says that the House:

... notes the Howard Government’s agenda to reduce employment conditions and employment security for women in the workforce.

How absolutely absurd for the Australian Labor Party to say that it is actually a recognition that this government is seeking to drive down wages and drive down employment security. Is that really what the Australian Labor Party says this government is trying to do? If that is their proposition, where are the facts to support it? The facts are not there. But I am happy to share facts with the House because, unlike the rhetoric we have heard from the Australian Labor Party, I would like to detail some specifics to the House so that an informed choice can be made about the actual impact of the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation.

Since March 1996, we have seen the number of women in employment increase by over one million—an increase of some 28.3 per cent—to a record high of 4.6 million women now in employment in Australia. The number of mothers who are joining the labour force has also risen over the last 10 years of the Howard government. Approximately 60 per cent of single female parents and 66 per cent of coupled female parents are now participating in the labour force. As well—and importantly—the gap between men and women’s wages has closed under the coalition; so, despite rhetoric from the Australian Labor Party that the gap is widening, it is not true. The fact is that under the coalition government, between February 1996 and May 2006 female earnings as a percentage of male earnings increased from 87.1 per cent to 89.8 per cent. I would certainly support the notion that it is still not at 100 per cent—and it should be—notwithstanding that, the fact is that women’s wages under the coalition are more closely aligned to men’s wages than they ever were under the Australian Labor Party.

Let us move on to the direct impact of Work Choices since it was introduced on 27 March 2006. We see that the participation of women in the labour force has risen significantly. The female participation rate stood at a record high of 57.9 per cent in September 2006—up by a full one per cent, from 56.9 per cent recorded in March 2006. So it has gone from a record high to reach a new record high under the Work Choices legislation. What is more, the number of women in unemployment has declined under the coalition government, since the introduction of Work Choices, by some 3,200 since March. Female unemployment now, I am pleased to advise the House, has fallen by 0.2 of a per cent to equal a 30-year low of 4.8 per cent under this government. So when the opposition says that this government is about driving down working conditions and reducing the number of women in the Australian labour force, the facts show a very different story.

More importantly, we note that the member for Calwell made comments that said that women’s rights needed to be entrenched in legislation and that unless that was done women were vulnerable to exploitation. What kind of exploitation, one would wonder—perhaps the kind of exploitation that existed under the Australian Labor Party when one million working Australians were thrown on the unemployment scrapheap. Is that the kind of protection that the Australian Labor Party would offer up as providing protection to Australian women? We did not see any protection afforded to Australian women when the economy was at record lows. (Time expired)

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