Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the experience of statutory individual contracts in Western Australia under the Liberal Court-Kierath government during which around 25 per cent of all agreements registered with the Western Australian Commissioner of Workplace Agreements had an ordinary rate of pay that was below the award rate by 1998. During the same period penalty rates and overtime rates were abolished in 44 per cent of agreements and the introduction of WA workplace agreements in the state public sector—

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tuckey interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

resulted in a pay disparity of up to 30 per cent between like employees.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tuckey interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for O’Connor is warned.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prime Minister, isn’t it the case that, just like state Liberal AWAs, your AWAs are all about a wages race to the bottom?

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

The Leader of the Opposition brings us back to AWAs. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for that, because his promise to abolish AWAs is a promise that he disavowed only eight months ago. What the Australian people want to know is what happened between that interview he gave on television in October of last year and the weekend. I think he got mugged by a bit of reality, and the reality is pronounced ‘New South Wales unions’. John Robertson and his merry men said to the Leader of the Opposition, ‘Kimbo, if you don’t front up and abolish AWAs, we’re going to roll you.’ That is basically what happened. Everybody in this building knows that the Leader of the Opposition’s powerbase is the New South Wales Right and everyone knows that his moment of truth was in fact the New South Wales ALP conference. What else would explain a policy which is against the economic interests of this country? What else would explain a policy that will threaten the living standards of hundreds of thousands of Australians? Because that is what is involved here. AWAs are the preferred employment instrument of aspirational Australians. The aspirational people of this country want AWAs. The Leader of the Opposition has declared an open fronted attack on aspirational Australians. I say to the Leader of the Opposition: he has betrayed by this decision a total misunderstanding of the hopes and the aspirations of Australia’s future.