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

and now want to raid the Future Fund, as the Treasurer reminds me. All of those initiatives, including the changes to workplace relations, have helped to deliver a stronger economy. One of the most significant groups which has benefited from the changes to workplace relations has been women. Since March 2006, when Work Choices was introduced, employment for women has risen by 113,500 jobs. Most significantly, 87 per cent of those 113,500 jobs have been full-time jobs. Since March 1996, the participation rate of women in the workforce has increased from 53.7 per cent to 57.6 per cent. The wages of women in the workforce have increased in real terms by more than 22 per cent. That is pretty positive stuff.

Everyone is wondering what the Labor Party’s policy is on workplace relations. You should not have to go too far because the chief spokesman for the Labor Party, Greg Combet, and his deputy, Sharan Burrow, are out there every day defending the Labor Party’s workplace relations policy, which is to reintroduce pattern bargaining, reintroduce the unfair dismissal laws, centralise the industrial relations system and so on. We have heard a bit of speculation recently that the Leader of the Opposition is seeking to manufacture a ‘Blair moment’ at the national conference—that is, to set up a straw man and then knock him over. He is going to pretend that he is being tough on the unions. I wondered to myself, ‘What is a Blair moment?’ I went back to what I think is a pretty impressive speech from Tony Blair at the Trades Union Congress, Brighton, on 9 September 1997. That was 10 years ago. In that speech Tony Blair commits to reduce tax—of course, the Labor Party oppose that. He commits to welfare to work—and the Labor Party in Australia oppose that. He said:

We will keep the flexibility of the present—

labour—

market. And it may make some shiver, but ... in the end it is warmer in the real world.

He is saying that he is going to keep the reforms of the Tory government, the Thatcher government, and continue them because they are in the best interests of the workers of Britain. If that is a Blair moment, we cannot expect that from Kevin. The Leader of the Opposition speculated on what ‘a Kevin’ is. We know what a Kevin is: it is Sharan Burrow putting a half-nelson on the Leader of the Opposition. That is a Kevin. He is going to pretend that it is him putting a half-nelson on Sharan Burrow.

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