Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for his question. He is a great member for La Trobe. In 1996 the unemployment rate in his electorate was 6.2 per cent. Today it is 3.5 per cent. And I can update the House on the impact of the government’s changes to the Labor Party’s job-destroying unfair dismissal laws. I look at the Sensis report which the Treasurer referred to a little bit earlier, which came out today. It is a good report. The report notes that already some 10 per cent of small and medium enterprises reported that they have made changes, with putting new workplace agreements into place being the most common action to date. SMEs in the Northern Territory are the most likely to have made changes so far. In the Northern Territory—Snowy, pay attention, and the member for Solomon over there—in February of last year, in the month before the introduction of Work Choices, the unemployment rate in the Northern Territory was 6.4 per cent; today it is two per cent. So there is no doubt that if you add together the Sensis survey and the outcomes as measured in the unemployment rate there is a positive impact associated with the removal of the unfair dismissal laws on small business. So it begs the question: why does the Labor Party want to reintroduce the job-destroying unfair dismissal laws? Why?

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