Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister advise the House how my electorate of Bass in northern Tasmania is benefiting from the government’s workplace reforms? Is the minister aware of any threats to these benefits?

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 Bass for his question. In answering it I note that in 1996 the unemployment rate in Bass was 9.9 per cent. Today the unemployment rate in Bass is 5.5 per cent. Indeed what we have seen in the last six months throughout Australia since the introduction of Work Choices is the creation of 205,000 jobs in Australia—184,000 of those jobs being full-time jobs, which is great news for Australian workers and their families. I was asked by the member for Bass whether there were any threats to the workplace reforms. We heard earlier in question time the policy of the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party of ‘no ticket, no start’. The Leader of the Opposition’s policies were being dictated to him, once again, over the weekend by the union bosses in Australia.

There are other examples, of course, of this. Recently the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, addressed the National Press Club, at which he let the cat out of the bag, stating that collective bargaining under Labor would not rely on a majority of employees wanting it. After that we had the member for Perth and the Leader of the Opposition twisting and contorting things, trying to say this in different ways—that perhaps you require a majority of members in the workplace in order to have this draconian policy put in place.

Last week the ACTU released their blueprint. What it did was reconfirm that collective bargaining under Labor would not rely on a majority of employees wanting it. So a number of employees could march into a business as part of this policy and require the opening up of the books of account of the business and demand a union collective agreement whether or not that was the choice of the majority of workers in the business. As the Treasurer pointed out, every morning we see the member for Lilley and the member for Swan out on a doorstop. They were missing this morning. This is the day that will go down in parliamentary history as the morning on which the roosters failed to crow, because neither of them was there.

Unlike the member for Griffith or Mr Thomson, the member for Wills—who were simply ignorant about this policy—the member for Perth and the member for Lilley obviously knew about this policy and, therefore, were taking their marching orders from the ACTU. They were not prepared to turn up to a doorstop in case some of the ladies and gentleman of the media were not members of the relevant union.

When the Leader of the Opposition was asked in the park about this particular ‘no ticket , no start’ policy, his weak and incipient response was, ‘We stand shoulder to shoulder with the union movement in our struggle on industrial relations.’ I know banning journalists from the ALP conference is serious, but this has a serious implication for every business in Australia. The serious implication is compulsory union collective agreements, opening up the books of account, if the Leader of the Opposition were to ever lead a government in Australia. It heralds a return to the closed shop in Australia. It is union rights over the rights of the individual. A return to ‘no ticket, no start’ is a return to compulsory unionism.