Andrew Southcott (Boothby, 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 how a modern and flexible workplace relations system is contributing to a stronger economy? Are there any threats to this contribution?

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

Order! When the minister has the call he will be heard.

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 Boothby for the question. I know what really matters to the people of Boothby. The unemployment rate in 1996 was 7.3 per cent in Boothby; today it is 3.7 per cent. That is what matters to the people in Boothby. The flexible workplace relations system that the government has introduced in two tranches—1996 and then 2006—represents an opportunity to help to build a stronger economy. We are just starting to see the dividends of the significant Work Choices reforms we announced and delivered last year into the parliament. The ABS—Australian Bureau of Statistics—data that came out last week showed that real wages growth continues at a reasonable and sustainable pace.

Of course, since the coalition has been in government, real wages—that is, after inflation—have increased by 23.4 per cent. After 13 years of Labor, real wages went backwards 1.8 per cent. The ABS data last week indicated that women in the workforce, in the last 12 months, have had a real increase in their wages of 3.5 per cent, and for men it has been two per cent. So the wages gap between men and women narrowed over the last 12 months after the introduction of Work Choices. The Melbourne Institute, also last week, released its wages report. You will not hear the opposition talking about this. The Melbourne Institute report said that employees on individual contracts had the largest annual increases in wages in the last 12 months—6.8 per cent, which is double the wage increases of people on collective agreements, at 3.4 per cent.

I was asked about threats. There is no greater threat to the economic prosperity of the nation than the election of a Rudd Labor government. You just need to look at the only economic policy they have released, their industrial relations policy, to gain a better understanding of the risk to the economy. The Labor Party want to reintroduce compulsory union bargaining fees, allow inflationary pattern bargaining, abolish Australian workplace agreements and, most significantly, abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which has helped to deliver the lowest level of strikes in the construction industry since records were first kept in 1913.

On the weekend we heard from a number of concerned interests about the fact that the Labor Party want to re-regulate shipping—to take back the industrial relations regime to 13 years ago. They are going to try and regulate every external ship coming into Australian ports. I noticed a report in the Australian only a few weeks ago that said that there were 153 idle ships offshore, cluttering the ports in New South Wales and Queensland. Can you imagine what it would mean for those ports and, most significantly, what it would mean for Australian farmers, miners and exporters, if the Labor Party were able to apply their old-time industrial relations system to external crews that are carrying Australian goods and services? That is taking it back; that is bad for the economy.

We know it will happen because Greg Combet said that once upon a time the unions ran the economy in Australia and it would not be a bad thing if they did it again. That would be bad for the Australian economy and very bad for Australian workers.