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

As I indicated in my answer to the previous question and now indicate also to the member for Wannon, the government were upfront with the Australian people in the budget forecasts when we said that unemployment in the year ahead would rise to 4.75 per cent, because we do not believe in gilding the lily. There are problems out there which are the product of what has occurred in the global economy and there are problems which have occurred here in terms of the legacy that we have inherited from those opposite.

But, rather than simply bleating about it—as those opposite did for a long, long time—we have embarked upon a clear-cut economic strategy for the future. That is based on three principles: responsible economic management, a program of nation building and an agenda for an education revolution to deal with the challenges of education, skills and training. Also, we will not allow those who are finding it tough with cost-of-living pressures at present simply to fend for themselves but instead, through the budget, we will deliver a package of some $55 billion worth of support for working families and, on top of that, $7.5 billion for pensioners and carers.

I say this to the honourable member: there will be great challenges ahead, including for businesses and firms, right across the country. Australia as an economy is not immune from what is happening across the rest of the world. If you look, for example, at the economies of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and elsewhere, you will find either zero or negative growth in one of the quarters which have just preceded the present one and you will find a downwards revision in economic growth across the global economy. This seems to be the subject of considerable mirth on the part of those opposite. I would say to those affected by these global economic factors that this is, in fact, serious news.

The key thing, however—and I draw again the honourable member for Wannon’s attention to this—is having responsible economic management which creates the conditions necessary to enable the Reserve Bank greater flexibility to bring down interest rates; that is principle No. 1. Principle No. 2 is an industrial relations system which is fair and flexible so that those employees who find themselves in real difficulty know they have some basic and underlying protections through the industrial relations system of the country.

The member for Wannon voted for Work Choices—although he may have been Speaker at the time and perhaps he did not. Perhaps he is the single member of those sitting opposite who is exonerated from that responsibility; his party, however, cannot be. But the Work Choices legislation put in by those opposite was quite clear: 31 per cent of those on AWAs had their rest breaks taken away; 49 per cent had their overtime loadings taken away; and 63 per cent had incentive based payments and bonuses removed. But, as I said before, redundancy payments—which is the matter directly relevant to the debate which is being had—when people lost their jobs could be stripped away as an entitlement without any compensation under laws put in place by those opposite. They shake their heads in disbelief as though this were simply not the case.

Frankly, those opposite should hang their heads in shame for creating a set of industrial relations laws for this country which made it so difficult for working people in Australia under Work Choices to get fairness, including under difficult circumstances when the firms for which they worked could no longer continue.

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