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

The real contribution that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has made to the industrial relations debate in Australia is not any one of the questions she has asked me or any of the questions she has asked the minister but the interview she gave on Radio National this morning, when she reminded the small business community of Australia—those 1.9 million men and women in this country who are small business entrepreneurs—that if Labor wins the next election those old unfair dismissal laws will be back. They will be back without any conditions. They will be back in a way that will discourage small business from taking on more staff.

We have seen a spectacular fall in unemployment. We have had a 29 per cent fall in the level of the long-term unemployed in this country over the last year. A major contribution to that has been the removal of Labor’s old unfair dismissal laws. What has happened is that small businesses have said, ‘Okay, I can now take on four or five new people and if one of them doesn’t work out I can let that person go without facing a lawsuit and being told by some commission or bureaucrat to pay that person $30,000 or $40,000 a year to go away.’ That is what used to happen before and that is what the member for Lalor wants to bring back.

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