Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister and it again relates to the Serco Sodexho Defence Services AWA at Duntroon. Isn’t it the case that under this AWA someone working on the roster I am holding for a regular 38-hour week—Monday to Friday and only two hours overtime—would be worse off by $55 a week, more than $2,800 a year, or more than $14,100 over the course of the five-year agreement? Why does the Prime Minister continue to deliberately pretend that working Australians have choice when the only choice is a wage cut—in this case, ending up more than $14,000 worse off? Why doesn’t the Prime Minister stop persistently misleading the Australian people about AWAs? Prime Minister, just tell the truth: what you want is lower wages.

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

Order! The last part of that question is clearly out of order. I call the Prime Minister.

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

I have already indicated in answer to the member for Perth that I do not take at face value allegations that he puts to me. I will examine the situation. But what I do take at face value—and I am entitled to and the House is entitled to take it at face value—is the fact that in 1996 the unemployment rate in the Australian Capital Territory was 7.7 per cent and in 2006 it is 2.8 per cent. That means that thousands of men and women in the ACT have had the great freedom of choice of a job under this government.

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister update the House on how the long-term unemployed are benefiting from the government’s workplace relations reform program? Is the minister aware of proposals to introduce compulsory union bargaining? What effect would such a proposal have on Australian employees, especially in my electorate of Lindsay?

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. As she knows, this government has been working hard for the last 10 years to ensure not only the creation of more jobs in Australia but that the real wages of Australians continue to rise. Wages have risen 16.4 per cent in real terms over the last decade, while figures for the June quarter show wages going up by an annualised 4.4 per cent this year and the economy remaining strong so that Australians can have a sense of belief in their future in this country.

The latest piece of evidence in relation to this matter is the long-term unemployment data. I can inform the House that the latest long-term unemployment data shows that the number of long-term unemployed in Australia fell by 9,300 in August to stand at 90,700, which is a record low for the number of long-term unemployed people in Australia. Indeed, since 1996 that figure has more than halved.

The member for Lindsay also asked me about these proposals by the Leader of the Opposition to introduce compulsory union bargaining in Australia. So far the Leader of the Opposition has given two examples as to why we should have this plan to take Australia back to the past in relation to compulsory union bargaining. The first example he gave was of Radio Rentals in Adelaide. What he forgot to say was that the Radio Rentals case is a dispute which has arisen because a certain handful of workers there decided that they did not want to take what the union recommended to them—namely, a union collective agreement. So this is a furphy as an argument for what the Leader of the Opposition says. His second example was the Boeing dispute, but he also failed to say in relation to the Boeing dispute that the majority of workers in fact did not want a collective agreement. This points out not only his weak attempt at justifying this policy but also that, if his policy is going to work according to these examples, what he is actually going to adopt is what the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, said yesterday: it does not require a majority of workers; it only requires one or two workers in a particular workforce. Indeed, when you read further into what Mr Combet said, he is proposing that we return to the system essentially of industry-wide pattern bargaining in this country that operated in the 1980s. Industry pattern bargaining takes no account whatsoever of the individual circumstances of any business; it just imposes a ‘one size fits all’. What a policy to drive inflationary pressure in this country. This once again shows how incompetent the Leader of the Opposition is so far as economic management is concerned. When it comes to protecting the jobs of Australians, the Leader of the Opposition has no interest whatsoever. These proposals show that he is simply not up to the job.

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 my question yesterday about the Australian Federal Police’s preference for collective agreement making. I refer to the fact that a survey of Federal Police found that there was very strong support for open collective bargaining—approximately 85 per cent; and that there was strong opposition to secret individual agreements—approximately 75 per cent. Yesterday in response to my question the Prime Minister said:

Under our policy you can choose ... Under our policy you have many choices.

Isn’t it the case that the only choice the Prime Minister is giving the Federal Police is his choice and that working Australians are worse off as a result? Prime Minister, aren’t the coppers onto you?

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

Order! The last part of the question is not in order. I call the Prime Minister.

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

I certainly hope not. I must say that I have enjoyed a cordial relationship with the Australian Federal Police. I think they do a great job. They perform their duties in a completely apolitical fashion, and that is precisely what they should do. What I said yesterday was that I had had a meeting with the leadership of the Australian Federal Police Association only a couple of weeks ago. I said my recollection was that during that meeting they did not raise any matters remotely close to what had been raised by the Leader of the Opposition. After question time I had a look at the record of interview of the discussion—the notes. I checked my notes.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Gillard interjecting

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

Order! The member for Lalor is warned!

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

I was reassured checking my notes. Not only did the gentlemen of the Australian Federal Police not appear to be onto me, but they really did not raise any of the matters raised by the Leader of the Opposition. They raised other matters, and I undertook to pursue those matters. All I can say is that in that discussion the sorts of matters alluded to by the Leader of the Opposition were not raised.

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

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Is the minister aware of proposals to give unions new powers to dictate wages and conditions and/or, as once boasted by a trade union boss, to ‘close down Australia with a few phone calls’? Would the minister update the House how these proposals might harm Australian workers, particularly in my export dependent electorate of O’Connor?

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for O’Connor for his question. In answering his question, I note that the unemployment rate in the O’Connor electorate has fallen to 3.8 per cent. We are all aware that yesterday at the National Press Club the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, delivered his vision for a workers’ nirvana in Australia. In trying to defend this vision, Mr Combet gave some very interesting answers, and one in particular caught my attention. I put it in this context because, repeatedly over this year, we have had from the Leader of the Opposition a demand that the government guarantee that no single worker in Australia would be worse off as a result of changes to workplace relations. Indeed, under pressure to match his rhetoric in June, the Leader of the Opposition said, ‘Nothing we do is going to make people worse off.’ That is a promise which the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, refused to give yesterday. He was asked by a journalist after his address at the Press Club: ‘Can you guarantee the Australian public that, if this proposal were put forward, there would be no job losses at all?’ There was a very complicated, confusing answer from Mr Combet, but the basic bottom line is that he refused to give a guarantee that nobody would be worse off in his great workers’ nirvana in Australia if this blueprint were to be put into place.

The reality is that of course workers would be worse off. The ripping up of AWAs, the imposition of collective bargaining, the extended rights of entry into workplaces, the imposition of a new payroll tax on businesses in Australia—all of these things which are part of the ALP’s policy under the Leader of the Opposition—would make hundreds of thousands of Australians worse off and would not lead to the job creation that we have seen over the last 10 years.

What all of this suggests is this that when it comes to policy in Australia, when it comes to looking at the future of this country, when it comes to meeting the challenges that we face in Australia, the Leader of the Opposition is simply not up to the job. To quote Laurie Oakes in the Bulletin this week, ‘When Kim Beazley makes a stupid statement, he does his best to ensure that it is really stupid.’