Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government and Minister for the Arts, representing the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations. How has the government acted to protect Australians' rights at work, what threats are there to Australia's fair work system and what is the government's response?

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyons for his question because he, like so many on this side of the House, has been a fighter for the rights of people at work, unlike those on the other side who would dismantle those rights. I am asked the question about what we have done by way of action to protect those rights. The most important thing we did on coming to office was to abolish Work Choices. In its place we established Fair Work Australia. Fair Work Australia was based around the fundamental principles of the right to collective bargaining, the requirement for the parties to bargain in good faith, and for there to be an ability to go to an independent umpire if there was an issue to be resolved.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

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

Order! The minister will resume his place. You will understand that it is quarter time in the response. The House will come to order. If there are complaints from people that they cannot hear the responses, it is because they are talking at the same time. The minister has the call. The minister will be heard in silence.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How has this benefited the Australian economy? I think it is important, given the last question in which the other side asked about job losses, because that is exactly what they said would happen when we introduced Fair Work Australia: jobs would be lost, industrial disputes would go up, inflation would go through the roof. What has been the evidence of that in the time since we abolished Work Choices and established Fair Work Australia? There have been 740,000 jobs created; industrial disputes are now lower than when you left office; inflation is still under control, despite an economy growing stronger than the rest of the world; and there has been significant wages growth. Why would you want to get rid of a system like that?

But I am asked about the threats to it, Mr Speaker. Well, I will tell you what the threats are. The threats are that the Liberal Party gets re-elected to office. What the Liberal Party did before the last election was say—and there we have the Leader of the Opposition; we remember him when he said it—'No return to Work Choices; it's dead, buried, cremated.' We saw Senator Abetz for three days in the campaign when he admitted that there would be tweaking to the industrial relations system. We all know what 'tweaking' is because it was defined. It is the backdoor method to regulating the wages system. We never saw Senator Abetz in the rest of the campaign. He was shut up.

If anyone wants to know what tweaking means, they need only look at what the New South Wales government is doing in relation to public servants. They are going to introduce legislation that declares by regulation the conditions of employment for nurses, teachers, firefighters and state public servants; they are doing this by regulation. In effect, what they are doing is stripping away the two fundamentals that we created. They are stripping away the entitlement to good-faith bargaining and they are stripping away access to the independent umpire. The reason they are doing it is that it is in the Liberal DNA. They cannot help themselves. They have never understood the importance of getting encouragement and participation in the workplace to lift productivity to underpin the prosperity of this nation. We on this side of the House do understand that, and that is why we will fight for the rights of workers to ensure that they benefit but the nation benefits as well. The only threat to it is the election of a Liberal government. Don't make that choice.