Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. Will the Deputy Prime Minister advise the House of the importance of ensuring fairness in the workplace in securing productivity? Are there any risks to this enhanced productivity?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Oxley for his question; I know that he is passionate about ensuring that people in his electorate have decent working conditions and fairness at work. Of course on this side of the House we are always very happy to talk about respecting fairness in people’s workplaces, and we are always very happy, too, to point out the alternative: a return to Work Choices, under the Leader of the Opposition—Work Choices mark 2. One of the reasons that we introduced the Fair Work Act was to put focus on productivity growth because of the stalling in productivity growth under the Howard government.

If we look at the Intergenerational report about Australia to 2050, we see it confirms that productivity growth was averaging 1.4 per cent during the decade to 2010, after reaching 2.1 per cent in the 1990s. Lifting this productivity rate is a key objective of the Fair Work Act. It needs to be taken into account in every decision taken by Fair Work Australia. With a focus on collective agreement making, that focus is of course about productivity enhancing enterprise agreements, and research has shown that collective bargaining is good for productivity growth. We have also reduced a massive regulatory burden on workplaces through the simplification of awards. We have reduced almost 4,000 federal and state awards to 122 modern, simple awards—that is, 197,000 pages of regulation reduced to 5,753 pages, a massive reduction of 95 per cent in the red-tape and regular burden.

Access Economics has modelled that the benefit of this to our economy and the benefit of moving to a uniform system of workplace relations for the private sector, as delivered by the fair work system, is $4.83 billion over 10 years. That story has a positive impact on economic growth and employment. Access Economics estimates the reform will boost national output by 0.05 per cent and increase employment by some 5,000 jobs at the peak of its beneficial impact in 2011-12.

I am asked, too, about threats to the fair work system and its ability to enhance productivity. We know that the Leader of the Opposition is a Work Choices supporter and is absolutely unrepentant about it. On 19 March 2008, the Leader of the Opposition said Work Choices was ‘good for wages, good for jobs and good for workers, and let’s never forget that’. Those are the words of the Leader of the Opposition. So maybe the Leader of the Opposition might like to explain this: how is it that when 63 per cent of Australian workplace agreements cut penalty rates that was good for workers? How is it that when 52 per cent of AWAs cut shift loading that was good for workers? How is it that when AWAs—51 per cent of them—cut overtime loadings that was good for workers? How is it that when 48 per cent of AWAs cut public holiday pay that was good for workers? The view of the Leader of the Opposition—pay cuts, loss of basic conditions, penalty rates, shift loading, overtime and public holiday pay—is somehow that all of that was good for workers.

Mr Speaker, you might believe that it is a little bit mysterious how the Leader of the Opposition could ever have come to such an irrational view. But I have a theory. My theory is that the Leader of the Opposition was actually indoctrinated by the $121 million of advertising that the Howard government and the Leader of the Opposition engaged in in relation to Work Choices advertising. This was a 24/7 campaign. The Leader of the Opposition would get up in the morning, make a cup of coffee, walk over to the fridge to get the milk out and there would be a Work Choices fridge magnet. He would get himself ready for work, he would get into the office and the first thing he would do when he was in the office was pick up his Work Choices pen. And then when he was starting to work on Battlelines, having his first preliminary thoughts, they were not very big thoughts so he could have got out his Work Choices pad and written them down. And then, as he was more ready to bring out Battlelines, he would have been working away on the computer looking at his mouse pad every day—24/7 indoctrination has obviously got to the Leader of the Opposition.

Fortunately, my department apparently rejected his request for Work Choices budgie-smugglers because the thought was too hideous to contemplate. But I have a standing offer to the Leader of the Opposition and I am waiting for his response. I still have five pallets of Work Choices propaganda. I have done my best. They have gone to Ethiopia. They have gone to East Timor. They have gone around the world. I have done my best to get rid of them, but I have five pallets of Work Choices propaganda. I have 34,000 individual items—Work Choices pens, mousepads and all the rest of it—ready to go. I am asking the Leader of the Opposition, so I do not have to table 34,000 items at some point, whether he can take these items off my hands. They will be very good for his next campaign, because we know that his slogan is going to be ‘Work Choices—good for workers’. Tony, you will really need these on the campaign trail.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Deputy Prime Minister, you will refer to members by their titles.