John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moreton for his question. He asks me whether I am aware of criticism of Australia’s labour market policies in international fora. The answer is yes, I am, but more seriously than that, I am aware of the fact that a person holding a very prominent public position in Australia—namely, the presidency of the Australian Council of Trade Unions—has broken one of the unwritten laws of Australian political combat; that is, that no matter how strongly you feel about something, you do not blacken the name of your own country overseas to score a domestic political point. That is what Sharan Burrow does. However I might disagree with Sharan Burrow, it is all right for her to try to argue the case against us here in Australia, but to go overseas and blacken the name of her own country in order to score a domestic political point is, in my view, breaking an unwritten law of Australian political combat. Not only did she blacken the name of Australia, but also she encouraged the blackening of Australia’s name. On 5 June, the Australian said Ms Burrow was:

... lobbying furiously by telephone from Melbourne to Geneva over the past week to have Australia included on the ILO’s list of 25 at Colombia’s expense.

They murder trade unionists in Colombia. Colombia is a foul, authoritarian country. For the President of the ACTU to be part of a process that replaces a country with an appalling human rights record and—no matter what she might think of me or our government, or any prominent official—to use an international forum to blacken the name of her own country is to break one of the unwritten laws of Australian political combat.

Not only was the ACTU engaged in that exercise; it was also engaged in the exercise of trying to suppress knowledge of how successful this country has been in reducing unemployment. I would have thought that if there was one thing that the ILO would be interested in, it would be how low unemployment is in Australia. I would have thought that the one great human dividend of labour market policy would be to give a job to as many people who wanted one as was humanly possible. I would have thought that that exceeded anything else—that it was more important than any ideology and that how many people you had in work was more important than whether it was this or that ideology. But it is not when it comes to the ACTU and its mates in the Australian Labor Party.

What they were doing was trying to suppress data about our unemployment level. The employer delegate reported that the union representatives actually tried to prevent data on unemployment being made known to the ILO. There is a very telling article by Peter Anderson in the Australian newspaper this morning, in which he reports having been at a meeting where the union delegates tried to stop news of the low unemployment being admitted into the debate before the committee. Mr Anderson states that he went back to his hotel room and said: ‘Thank heavens for CNN. I flick on CNN and I see that Australia has a 33-year low in unemployment.’ So—no thanks to the ACTU, no thanks to Sharan Burrow and no thanks to their friends in the Australian Labor Party—it has taken the reach of CNN to bring home to international people just how successful this country has been in reducing unemployment.

I simply say that it is one thing to attack me; it is one thing to attack the government. By all means, have open season on us here in Australia. But, when you go overseas, do not blacken the name of your own country in order to score a domestic political point.

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