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

Let me take you to a few quotes. I am interested that the member opposite says he did not say that. Let’s actually see what the Leader of the Opposition did say. In relation to productivity growth:

… there is no productivity agenda here.

National Press Club, 1 February this year. Or:

This will hurt the economy.

Kim Beazley, the Leader of the Opposition, on ABC’s PM program just on 10 October last year. On industrial disputation he said in a speech to the Tasmanian ALP state conference on 6 August 2005:

These extreme changes risk dragging us back into an era of heightened industrial conflict.

Let’s turn to wages growth. Again, let me quote what the Leader of the Opposition said. This was at a press conference on 10 October 2005:

This is about slashing wages; make absolutely no doubt about that.

On 28 March of this year, the member for Perth—I will come to him in a moment—said that the minimum wage would go down. On the issue of jobs, we have the Leader of the Opposition reported on the AAP news wire service on 23 October 2005 as saying that these changes would not lead to the employment of more Australians, yet he comes in here today and says, ‘I didn’t say that the sky would fall in. I didn’t say that there would be mass sackings.’ The reality is that when you go back through the record—and we keep records about the Leader of the Opposition—to what he has said in the past, what he said to the Australian people and to the workers of this country and their families was that these changes would lead, in effect, to the sky falling in so far as their economic future was concerned.

He even says today, ‘What I was saying was that this would lead to a slow crumbling away of your conditions.’ Let us even accept that for a moment and take the charges as they were made against Work Choices by the opposition. The first charge was in relation to jobs. As I said, the Leader of the Opposition was quoted as saying that these changes would not lead to the employment of more Australians. Let me take a few other statements that were made by representatives of the labour movement in Australia. Mr Greg Combet, the secretary of the ACTU, said on the John Laws show on 2UE radio on 27 March of this year:

Laws: You don’t agree that these changes would provide any sort of job growth?

Combet: Oh I can’t see it.

What about Bill Shorten, famously quoted—perhaps infamously, some would think now—in Workplace Express on 26 May 2005:

Make no mistake: today is green light for mass sackings.

Here is Mr Shorten, a celebrated union official in Australia, saying that the Work Choices package would be a green light for mass sackings in Australia. What has happened? Again we hear the Leader of the Opposition saying that this is a major insult to Middle Australia. That is what he said today. Let us have a look at Middle Australia in terms of jobs growth since Work Choices came into operation on 27 March: 205,000 jobs have been created in Australia in the months of April through to September of this year. Let me put this in historic context: the average jobs growth in Australia for the months of April through to September for the past 20 years has been about 75,000 jobs.

At a time when Mr Beazley and the union movement were saying that this would lead to a reduction in jobs in Australia, we have seen almost three times the average number of jobs created in Australia in the last six months. We see that reflected in the unemployment rates. We have a 30-year low unemployment rate in Australia of 4.9 per cent, having falling to 4.8 per cent, and the highest participation rate—that is, the highest number of Australians confident to go out there and seek a job—that we have had in Australian history. The first charge that the Leader of the Opposition made against Work Choices was that it would slash jobs—even though he wants to run away from it today because the inconvenient truth is that this has led to greater economic conditions for Australians—and that has been proven to be totally and absolutely wrong.

Let me go to the second core criticism that was made of Work Choices: it would slash wages. The Leader of the Opposition said at his press conference on 10 October of last year:

This is about slashing wages; make absolutely no doubt about that.

Surely that was saying that the sky was going to fall in for workers in Australia. I remind the member for Perth, who is no doubt following me in this debate, of what his media release from March of this year said:

... the Minimum Wage will not rise in real terms under the Australian Fair Pay Commission.

What have we seen? Let us look at the empirical data—not the claims that I am making, not the claims that the opposition is making—about what has happened since Work Choices came into operation. The Australian Bureau of Statistics labour price index shows that total rates of pay, excluding bonuses, increased by 1.1 per cent in the June quarter of 2006 and by 4.1 per cent over the year to the June quarter. Here we have the ABS data—the official collection of data in this country—showing that wages, on an annualised basis, are increasing by 4.1 per cent. If you look at the data relating to collective agreements in Australia, what it shows is that collective agreements have wage increases built into them, usually in the area of four to 4½ per cent. It is hardly a slashing or dragging down of wages in Australia.

As the Prime Minister pointed out in question time today, real wages for Australians over the past 10 years have increased by 16.4 per cent. Let us compare that to the previous 13 years of Labor government, including the time when the Leader of the Opposition was last coresponsible for the economy of Australia as the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Employment, Education and Training. What happened to real wages when Mr Beazley was last in charge of the economy in Australia? Real wages went backwards over 13 years by 0.2 per cent. In 13 years of Labor government, real wages go down. In 10 years of a coalition government, real wages have gone up by 16.4 per cent. I ask Middle Australia: which outcome would you prefer? The Leader of the Opposition says today that this is some assault on Middle Australia. The reality is that this has been to the advantage of Australians. On top of that, we had the recent decision of the Australian Fair Pay Commission.

Had you stopped to listen—if you were not one of those Australians that had given up listening to what the member for Perth and the Leader of the Opposition have been saying about these things because they have been caught out so many times misleading in their comments about industrial relations—over the last few weeks and months to the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party, their clear and simple message about the Australian Fair Pay Commission was that it would drive down wages in Australia. What did we have last week? The Australian Fair Pay Commission came out and awarded a $27.36 increase—

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