Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyons, someone who's always working for regional Tasmania. It's worth considering, with the fear campaigns that he referred to in his question, what those opposite actually predicted about our workplace reforms. What did they say would occur? The Leader of the Opposition said it's going to result in a higher unemployment rate. Senator Henderson said this is a job destroyer. Senator Cash was more nuanced, and said it would close down Australia!

What we have now is an unemployment rate at 3½ per cent and a participation rate at 66.8 per cent. We are now just shy of half a million new jobs since this government came to office. And the feature as to what's happened to those jobs, because this government said we wanted to see more secure jobs, is that what we have now is that 85 per cent of those new jobs are full-time jobs. You have a situation where in our first 12 months 54 per cent of all new jobs that were created were for women going into full-time work. This is where what the government has done with respect to cheaper child care intersects with what we've done with workforce flexibility and intersects with what we've done with job security. It is delivering those sorts of job security outcomes that those opposite predicted the opposite of.

Even more bizarre are their wages predictions compared to what we're getting now. The 2014 budget—the Leader of the Opposition will remember the 2014 budget; it's the one where he tried to abolish bulk-billing—was the one where they predicted that wage growth would get a three in front of it, that the following year would be three per cent. By the end of government they ended up predicting they would get 3.25 per cent wage growth. How did they go across those years they were predicting three? 2.6, 2.1, 2.1, 1.9, 2.1, 2.3, 1.8 and 1.8. What do we have now? 3.7. What's the difference? Under them, low wage growth was a deliberate design feature of their management of the economy. When you change the policies to deliver wage growth, look at what happens: wages grow. 5.75 per cent changing on awards right now for 2.7 million workers. For people in aged care, a 15 per cent increase in their wages. These are wage increases that those opposite always opposed and voted against but this government delivers.

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