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 inform the House of the effect of workplace relations reform on job creation in Australia last year? Is the minister aware of alternative proposals which would adversely affect the impact of these reforms?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, 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. I note that the member for Lindsay reminded me before question time that in 1996, when I went doorknocking in the by-election in Emu Plains, the unemployment rate in her electorate was 7.3 per cent under the old Hawke-Keating industrial relations laws. Today, under the Howard government’s workplace laws, unemployment is 4.2 per cent. As the Prime Minister said a little bit earlier in question time—there is a compelling table there—since the Work Choices legislation was introduced, 245,000 new jobs were created in the March to December period, which, when we compare it with every other March to December period, is by far the highest level of job creation since 1978. In addition, we now have the lowest level of industrial disputation since 1913, since records were first kept; we have the lowest unemployment rate, at 4.6 per cent, of any March to December period since 1978; and, importantly, we have the highest participation rate, 64.9 per cent, of any March to December period since 1978.

The Work Choices laws are part of the equation that has helped to create this record job environment. The Labor Party’s agenda is to tear up these laws and replace them with the ACTU’s agenda, and—gee!—we heard about that last week, didn’t we? We heard it thanks to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who pulled the retractable cord, and the Leader of the Opposition came back onto the ACTU agenda. There is no doubt that the new laws have had a very positive influence on the creation of jobs in Australia—no doubt about it. The proof of the pudding is in the figures that are delivered, with more than 83 per cent of those 245,000 jobs being full-time jobs, the lowest level of industrial disputation and wages growth, wages going up, and the fact that the employment rate is at its lowest level since the comparable period in 1978.

We want to know what the Labor Party is going to tell the Australian workers out there about the ACTU agenda they are going to roll out in a Rudd government, because the 139 paragraphs of the Leader of the Opposition’s speech to the Business Council last week did not address the secret agenda—or perhaps non-secret agenda—of the Labor Party on industrial relations. The coalition is about job creation, the coalition is about higher wages, the coalition is about less industrial disputation and the Labor Party is about the agenda of the trade union movement.