Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister inform the House how strong protections against wildcat industrial action have assisted in strengthening the Australian economy? Is he aware of proposals to wind back these protections? How might this harm Australian workers and their wages?

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

The member for Deakin raises a very important issue and it goes directly to one of the significant achievements of this government, and that is to have presided over a dramatic fall in the number of industrial disputes in this country. It is worth reminding the House that data released by the ABS last week highlights that in 2006 the industrial disputation rate fell to 14.9 working days lost per 1,000 employees. This is the lowest annual rate of disputation since figures were first compiled in 1913—that is, the year before the outbreak of World War I. By contrast, when Labor was last in office there was an average rate of 193 working days lost.

It is the current policy of the Australian Labor Party to do a number of things that threaten this wonderful achievement of industrial peace. It comes from a party that has always said it was better at achieving industrial peace although the record says we have done much more and have been more successful. What Labor intends to do in order to shatter this record of industrial peace is, firstly, remove the protections against secondary boycotts that are enshrined in the Trade Practices Act; secondly, scrap the ‘secret ballot before strikes’ provisions of the Work Choices legislation; and, finally, abolish the building and construction legislation, and the commission, which has undeniably cleaned up the building industry in Australia. Over the last year, there is no industry that has seen a more spectacular fall in the number of days lost through strikes than the building and construction industry. Talk to any employer in that industry—indeed, talk to any union official in that industry—and they will acknowledge that this is a direct result of the government’s legislation. Yet Labor wants to do away with that and, presumably, bring back the anarchy that was particularly a feature of major construction sites in Perth and Melbourne.

There is a further dimension to this, and that is that the New South Wales Greens—who have not only declared a preference deal with Labor for the upcoming New South Wales election but are also busily negotiating a preference deal with the Australian Labor Party for the upcoming federal election—have announced that they want to take this exercise a step further. Yesterday they said they wanted to abolish industrial torts in New South Wales. In other words, they want to take away the common-law right of a company that was damaged by union action—a common-law right that was enshrined in the famous and meritorious Dollar Sweets case, in which my distinguished colleague the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and Treasurer was involved. That industrial tort power, the inherent common-law right to sue if you are damaged, was upheld in the Dollar Sweets case, and they want to abolish that.

And if the Greens proposals were adopted at a federal level, who knows? When Labor negotiates preference deals with the Greens, the interests of the people are always second. We know what happened in 2004. We know that the present leader’s predecessor sold out those timber workers in Tasmania to try and get some Greens preferences in seats like Grayndler, Kingsford Smith and all those other inner seats in the cities. So what I predict is that part of the preference deal will be to go even further than they have gone. I ask the simple question: in light of the magnificent era of industrial harmony that has been ushered in under the government of the last 11 years, why on earth would you take action to demolish that? Why would you abolish the secondary boycott provisions of the Trade Practices Act? Why would you want to scrap the secret ballot? Why would you want to bring back anarchy in the building and construction industry? Why would you want to get in bed with the Greens and, in the process, sell out not only the interests of workers but also the interests of industrial harmony in this country?