Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I must say how surprised I am by the contribution of the member for Maranoa. He highlights how out of touch this government is, how much it lives in the past, how much it relies on spurious argument, and how much it relies on playing the person rather than addressing the very substantial policy issues that need to be addressed to secure the wellbeing of families and the wellbeing of Australia’s economy into the future.

I found it amazing that it was left to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to argue in defence of the government’s Work Choices legislation. The Prime Minister left in a hurry. He did not want to put his case, even though yesterday he said in parliament, ‘Working families have never been better off.’ Really? Tell that to the families out there, across the length and breadth of Australia. Tell them that they have never been better off when every day they tell us, as their elected representatives, how they are under financial pressure because of the impact of rising petrol prices, rising health costs and rising childcare costs. If the government think that working families have never been better off, that shows how out of touch they are.

The Prime Minister wants the Australian community to believe that our good economic fortune, as he puts it, is related to the introduction of Work Choices. You heard the Leader of the Opposition debunk that argument very substantially. He debunked the notion that Work Choices is linked to productivity improvements. Data shows that collective agreements lead to a much more harmonious and productive outcome than individual contracts. The Prime Minister fails to recognise that employment growth, which we all want—and we are happy that unemployment is falling—is the result of a huge resources boom and has nothing to do with the government’s regressive industrial relations agenda.

The families I represent tell me that their level of prosperity and their living standards are very largely determined by decent and fair arrangements in the workplace. The minister said that the Labor Party should look at policies that are compassionate. I think compassion resides on this side of the chamber, not with the minister and the Howard government. If they were truly compassionate, they would have an industrial relations system that guarantees a decent living wage that keeps up with inflation. They would have a system that guarantees decent minimum standards so that people do not fall through the cracks. They would guarantee decent compensation for people who work unsociable hours and have to leave their families in order to supplement their incomes, either on the weekend or on overtime arrangements. The government would ensure that their industrial relations system has a proper work and family life balance. They would ensure that workers are protected against unfair and unjust dismissal. They would ensure that we have family-friendly provisions available to all people, and they would continue to insist that women achieve equal pay for work of equal value.

That is the compassionate system that Labor has always stood for, and it is the system that is very much under attack by the Work Choices legislation. The brunt of that is being felt by families across Australia, and it is particularly being felt by people who are most vulnerable in the workplace—young people, women working on a casual or part-time basis and women in industries such as tourism and hospitality, where wage rates have been behind the average.

People that needed protection do not have it anymore. They have no guarantee of compassion under this regime that the minister tells us is nirvana—that it will produce flexibility—but he never tells you about the negative impacts. We all know from talking to people that the loss of overtime, the loss of penalty rates and no protection against job insecurity or unfair dismissals are issues that are important to the families that we represent. (Time expired)

See this speech in context