Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister outline to the House why Australian workers are able to access more jobs, higher wages and a better standard of living than a decade ago? Is the Prime Minister aware of proposals which would threaten Australian workers and their prosperity?

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

May I take the second part of the answer first. I saw over the weekend the Leader of the Opposition talking about a new proposal he had for collective bargaining. He did not provide much detail of it to me, but I really did not need him to do that because I had had the benefit some months ago of a discussion with the secretary of the ACTU. He told me what good faith bargaining, a la the Labor Party and the Australian trade union movement, meant. What he basically said was that, if you have a workplace where a majority of people vote in favour of a collective agreement, that would mean that a collective agreement would be forced on every member of that workplace. I was told that this is what happened in the United States. I was a little surprised at the reference to the United States because I thought we never followed anything in the industrial relations area or the social welfare area that came from the United States.

What the Leader of the Opposition has in mind in relation to collective bargaining would strike at the right of businesses to run their own businesses. It would deny freedom of choice to employers and employees. It demonstrates again that he does not have a commitment to the policies that are needed to maintain the prosperity of the Australian economy.

And that brings me to the first part of the honourable member’s question. Let me simply say to him: the reason why we have had almost two million jobs created in the last 10 years, the reason why in the last six months we have had 175,000 new jobs created since Work Choices came into operation, the reason why industrial disputes are now at their record low level since statistics began to be collected and the reason why workers’ wages have gone up by 16.4 per cent in real terms since this government came to power is the combination of this government’s economic policies and the relentless commitment of this government to maintaining and extending the prosperity of the Australian people.

The problem with the Leader of the Opposition’s proposal in relation to collective bargaining is that it would take us back to the rigidity of the Keating era, when more than a million Australians lost their jobs. It is not a recipe to spur prosperity; it is a recipe to retard prosperity. It is a recipe to take away the right of managers to manage and it would deny the freedom of choice now available to Australian workers.