Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister update the House on how many jobs have been created in Australia over the past year? Prime Minister, what is the reason for this jobs growth? Are there any risks to this growth?

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

I thank the member for Bass for his question. He asked me to inform the parliament, which I happily do, of how many jobs have been created in Australia over the last year. I can inform the member for Bass that, since May 2006, no fewer than 309,900 jobs have been created in Australia. I am also pleased to tell him that no fewer than 359,000 jobs, of which 94 per cent have been full time, have been created since the major amendments to the government’s workplace legislation which came into operation on 27 March last year.

The member for Bass also asks me why there has been such spectacular growth in jobs. There has been spectacular growth in jobs in this country because we now have a government and a labour market that are employment friendly. We have a labour market that actually encourages people to take on more staff. We have a labour market which particularly encourages small business to take on more staff. In relation to a threat of higher unemployment, the greatest threat of higher unemployment contained in Labor’s policy is the promise to bring back the dreaded unfair dismissal laws. Those unfair dismissal laws, for more than a decade, discouraged small business in Australia from taking on people. Everyone knows that what used to happen was that frivolous claims were made; small business was encouraged to pay $30,000 or $40,000 ‘go away money’ to somebody who had made a frivolous claim. They paid the money and then got back to their business, but they got back to their business vowing never again to take a risk about employing more staff than they thought they might need.

That atmosphere has changed completely, and I would have thought that the Labor Party would try to be friendly to small business, that they would stand up to the union bosses and say, ‘Look, we’ll have to go along with certain things, but don’t you people understand that bringing back the unfair dismissal laws is going to stifle job growth in the small business sector?’ But they did not have the courage to do that. This is not just a piece of mere fantasy on my part. The Sensis business index of small and medium enterprises released on 6 May has very positive results on SME employment. The key message from that report is that, of those small businesses that have reported changes in their business arrangements following the introduction of workplace relations changes, no fewer than one in five—that is, 20 per cent of the 1.9 million small businesses in Australia—have reported taking on new workers as a result of the changes that we have made and that Labor opposes. No less than 20 per cent of the total of small and medium businesses in Australia are saying, ‘We are employing more people because of the Howard government’s workplace changes.’ All of that will come to a shuddering halt if the Labor Party wins the next election and is able to introduce its policies.

So I say to the member for Bass: yes, we do have a 33-year low in unemployment—a fact that union bosses might want to keep not only from Australians but from the world, but we might deal with that in another context—and one of the major reasons that unemployment is so low in Australia at the moment is that small business once again has the climate and the courage to take on more staff. That is a great thing for the workers of Australia and it is a great thing for small business. It will be a terrible thing if Labor gets the opportunity to bring all that to a halt.