Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Trade. Would the minister advise the House how a better-run waterfront is helping Australia’s export performance? Is the minister aware of any threats to our $210 billion-a-year export industry?

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Barker for his question. Representing an export electorate, he would be deeply conscious of the importance of good trade to our national economy. As he mentioned, our exports reached $210 billion in 2006. That is more than double the level of exports from Australia when we came to office. Australia’s 42,000 exporters, supported by this government, have done a fantastic job in taking Australian manufacturing, mining and agricultural products to the world. But there is no doubt at all that their capacity to boost our exports has been significantly boosted by the reform to our waterfronts. The fact that this government was prepared to take on our ports, which were so often gridlocked, and actually get them working has made a real difference to Australia’s export capability. As the Prime Minister said a little while ago, when we came to office our five major ports managed a pathetic 16 or 17 container movements an hour. Labor and the unions told us that that was as good as it can possibly be, that it could not get any better than that.

We set about reforming the waterfront and now we regularly achieve 27 crane movements an hour, and we are well and truly up with world’s best performance. That has made a real difference. This government has been prepared to take on the necessary reform and deliver results to achieve real benefits for our economy. Labor of course opposed all of those reforms. They were out there protesting, setting up pickets and getting actors and performers to demonstrate that this was the end of civilisation, that it was a threat to workers’ rights. One of the people who was most active in organising these pickets was in fact Robert Coombs, the former branch secretary of the MUA in Sydney. Mr Coombs has moved on and is now part of the latest class of union hacks to be ushered into the New South Wales parliament. At the beginning of this month, he made his inaugural speech to parliament. He chose as his topic the extraordinary change that has come over the waterfront in Australia—this is from the man who organised the pickets against waterfront reform. In his maiden speech, he said:

Australian ports are recognised as amongst the most productive and efficient in the world—

The member for Swansea further said:

Our stevedoring industry is delivering crane rates and other productivities equal or better than world’s best practice, and this is testament to the innovation of management and the maturity of its workforce.

So the man who organised the pickets and resisted all of the reform is trying to take credit for the improvements that have occurred in the workforce as a result of this government’s determination to reform it.

Unfortunately not everybody in the maritime workers union is similarly convinced. In fact, after the ALP national conference, the MUA put out a press release in which they claimed to have secured the support of the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party to go back to the old ways, to commit to cabotage and ensure that Australian jobs in shipping and offshore industry are preserved.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Batman is nodding his head. He was very quick to go to the press to say, ‘The MUA has got it wrong.’ The old union boss was telling the new union bosses that that is not the way it is. I thought that the best thing to do to find out about this was to go to the ALP website and look for a report on the ALP conference. When I looked at the website, I found that it said:

The Platform as adopted at 44th ALP National Conference (April 27-29-2007) will be posted shortly.

I do not know whether the honourable member for Batman or the MUA has got it right as to the policy and what the Leader of the Opposition agreed to in relation to waterfront reform. But I am suspicious that the deal with the MUA will be another return to the old ways. The Leader of the Opposition is fond of saying that the resources boom will come to an end. Well, it will come to an end if Labor are elected and they return the old-style union dominated policies to our waterfront. If we cannot get exports across the ports, yes, the boom will end and so will the boom for our economy, and it will be as a result of mismanagement, not as a result of world events and the performance of Australian exporters.