Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The fact that we in the parliament and the nation face is as follows: we have inflation running at 16-year highs and we currently have working families, as a consequence of that, paying the second highest interest rates in the world. That is the challenge that we face. That is the challenge we have inherited from our predecessors. The question arises as to what we now do about it.

The beginning of wisdom with this lies in recognising that you have a problem. The core challenge which remains unanswered in this debate is: do all members of this House recognise that we have a challenge in dealing with the inflation problem? If I listen carefully to those opposite in their recent contributions in the debate, I hear the member for Wentworth referring to the inflation problem as a fairytale; the member for Higgins, only six months ago, saying that the inflation rate was right where we wanted it; the Leader of the Opposition disputing the real relationship between inflationary movements and interest rates; and the good old Leader of the National Party giving the classic three-point National Party response to any problem: spend, spend, spend.

The core question that we face is: how do you deal with the inflation challenge that we have now inherited? We on our side of the parliament—the government—have articulated a five-point plan to deal with the budget surplus, with the encouragement of private savings, with the skills crisis, with infrastructure and with participation, all of which are critical elements in bringing the inflation genie back under control and boosting long-term productivity growth.

Part of the participation problem lies in having not only effective tax policy settings and effective welfare policy settings but also effective industrial relations policy settings. That is why we, the government, have put forward a fair and balanced industrial relations system for the future of this nation, embodied in the interim arrangements introduced by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations in the bill which is currently before the parliament and as reflected elsewhere in our policy. We on this side of the House have a clear-cut policy when it comes to industrial relations. Our opponents do not. In December they said that Work Choices was dead, in January they said it was back alive again, in February it was dead again—and still we seem to have a bit of a flutter, based on the statement by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in terms of what may still happen in the Senate.

In particular, I draw to the attention of honourable members a statement made today by the good old member for Canning, who, when asked, ‘Wouldn’t AWAs be gone forever after five years?’ responded: ‘But anything could happen in five years, you know. You could have a different government after five years.’ Therein lies the point. Whereas they may say that Work Choices and AWAs are dead and buried or fluttering away there for a bit, the truth is that they lie in the back drawer and lie in the top drawer, ready to be taken out should the opposition assume office at the next election. You can just see it. There it is: Work Choices is dead one minute, back again, dead the next, then waiting for the next election. You can see them with the defibrillator prongs waiting to bring Work Choices back to life—zap, zap. On the day after the election, bang—it is back into life. No-one knows where the Liberal Party stand on industrial relations. They have not made up their own mind on this. They are a party that has lost touch and lost direction.

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