Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister advise the House how the government’s workplace reforms are delivering economic opportunity for all Australians, including the people of Ryan? Is the minister aware of any proposals that could cut wages and jobs?

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 Ryan for his question and his strong representation of his constituents in this place. As I said earlier, in the last six months we have seen the creation of 205,000 new jobs in Australia. To put that in its historical context, the average job creation for the same six months in Australia for the past 20 years was just 75,000 jobs. That is 75,000 jobs on average for the last 20 years. This year, after Work Choices came into operation, 205,000 jobs were created in this country. Not only have we seen the creation of more jobs; we have seen wages grow in Australia over the same period of time.

The member asked me: are there any proposals that would cut wages and jobs in Australia? Indeed, I noticed that last week the ACTU released their blueprint for industrial relations in Australia, and this is a blueprint for economic vandalism of Australia. Make no mistake about it—this would lead to cutting wages for Australians because, when you look into the detail of this blueprint, what we find is that the ACTU intend to prohibit employers offering any inducements to workers to enter into agreements that do not involve a union.

So that means that, if there is a demand by a number of workers in a place for a union collective agreement and that union collective agreement is put in place, the employer and proprietor of that business would be precluded under this ACTU blueprint from offering any worker in that business an individual contract which paid higher wages. So this is quite clearly a blueprint to drive down the wages of Australians if it were ever enacted in this country. It would drive down wages for hundreds of thousands of Australians in this country.

We know that the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, said that it was a good idea when the unions ran the country, that it would be a good idea again if the unions ran the country. What we now know is that his idea of running the Australian economy would be to impose a union official on every workplace in Australia, to be able to demand the opening of the books of every business in Australia and to be able to effectively drive down the superior wages of many Australians in this country. We know that the Leader of the Opposition simply retains his job because the union movement in this country allows him to have it. The great shame in this country would be if he were ever elected and ever able to implement this blueprint, because it would be an economic disaster for Australians.