Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The ALP’s argument today is that they are looking for a guarantee that jobs will be secure. They are also denying the fact that they have talked up the fear campaign over the last 12 months. We are seeing an ALP that has been told to get in here today, on the day of action, and muscle up to the government. Where in the legislation that the ALP passed in this House in the 1990s did it guarantee the one million people who were unemployed during the nineties a job? The problem with the Labor Party and the union movement is that they are not interested in the welfare of the unemployed. They keep talking about those who have jobs, but they have shown no interest at all in those who are unemployed. If they showed any interest at all, they would have recognised that, in the seven or eight months since Work Choices came in, we have seen 165,000 new jobs created compared to the 10.9 per cent unemployment rate during the Labor Party’s term in office. If they deny my claim, all I have to do is refer to a certain minister, who, on 30 June 1993, said:

... my father said to me when I got the Defence portfolio that ... I’d been given the poisoned chalice. I thought then he was wrong and now I know he really was wrong. I have it now.

Of course, that was the current Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, speaking about his portfolio as the then minister for employment. He also said in 1993, when he was asked by an interviewer:

So this group—

the unemployed—

are being told, in their twenties, by society, effectively: You’re the losers; go to the scrap heap.

This was Kim Beazley’s response to that interviewer:

Well, those who haven’t made it into work and who are among the long-term unemployed, that’s a reasonable statement.

He gave up, and those people remained unemployed. Yet what have we seen in the 10 years that the Howard government has been in place? We have seen 1.9 million people get a job. These are people who can now go home after work and sit down with their families. They have a wage that they bring home so they are able to pay their bills, feed their family and pay for the kids to go to school. They are not like those who were unemployed, who were denied any form of support or even attention by those opposite when they were in power.

The ALP have said today that they have never talked up the fear, that they have never talked about the immediate adverse impacts of Work Choices—that this will be a slow burn. This is rhetoric that is changing. It is a shifting sands argument by those on the other side. Of course they created a fear campaign. Of course they are out there talking about doom and gloom. I recall the Leader of the Opposition in this chamber saying that the divorce rate would go up because of Work Choices. The absurdity of the man, making those sorts of claims!

The Leader of the Opposition and the member for Perth are two men under pressure. They are under pressure and they are under the microscope of the union movement at the moment. They are now of course trying to back-pedal from some of the comments that they made. They have been told to come in here and muscle up once again.

We keep hearing, over and over again, exaggerated claims by those on the other side. The union movement this morning attempted to flex its muscle in an effort to demonstrate its relevance to the Australian workplace. The call went out to fill the ‘G’. I know about that call to fill the ‘G’ because three-quarters of my electorate was letterboxed with ‘Fill the “G”!’ And, of course, mine was just one of many electorates targeted. What did we see? We saw 45,000 people turn up. I think Carlton and Fremantle get more spectators at their games than turned up today. In fact, I would guess that Jimmy Barnes, the rock legend that he is, could probably get 30,000 of those on his own, without even having it forced, because of his status. If you said, ‘Free attendance, a day off work—come and listen to Jimmy Barnes, a great Australian rock legend,’ you would expect a minimum of 30,000 just to come along and listen to the man, without having some sort of campaign attached to it by the union movement.

The call went out and what we are seeing now is exaggerated claims about the numbers of people who have attended these rallies. There is one thing about those on the other side: if they tell a furphy often enough, people are bound to believe it. That is what this campaign is all about, and that is of course what we are also seeing with the exaggerated claims of those who attended the rallies today.

At today’s rally the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, joined his union mates on the stage and railed against Work Choices. He claimed that Australians would be working harder, for longer hours and for less pay. This is, of course, a perfect example of the misstatements and half-truths that have surrounded Work Choices. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations outlined today in question time and also during his contribution on the MPI the proud record of this government in delivering jobs, in delivering wages growth and also in ensuring that the number of disputations in this country has dropped right off.

For the record, we have seen 165,000 new jobs since Work Choices came in—not for the whole year; only since Work Choices came in. If you take the whole year, it is even more. We have also seen real wage growth of 16.4 per cent in the last 10 years. We have also seen that, contrary to the bad old days of damaging strikes and industrial disputes, working days lost in Australia have fallen dramatically from 104 per 1,000 employees in 1994, when Kim Beazley was responsible for employment, to today’s level of 3.1 days—a single-digit figure—per 1,000 employees. This is the lowest level of industrial disputation in the history of this nation.

He went on to deride the changes, refusing to acknowledge that the changes to workplace relations since 1996 have really delivered these better outcomes. Instead, we hear stories about rights being stripped away, workers being forced to sign AWAs or get the sack and people being sacked for no good reason. Yet when each of these stories is subjected to even the most cursory examination they are found to be exaggerated, overstated or simply manipulated to fit the requirements of the opposition. The member for Perth, who is a serial offender at this, has been found out on a number of occasions.

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