Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let’s look at the big picture about the skills shortage prevailing in Australia at the present moment. It is a pity we do lack skilled workers, but that is a manifestation of an economy that is working.

I recall that, when Labor was in power, the apprenticeship scheme had failed in every state. Why did it fail? It failed because the trade union movement did not like young people clogging up the system and working as what was seen by the trade union movement as cheap labour, because it could not extract the fee from apprentices that it could from a worker on full wages. That is why the coalition government, when we inherited the position we did in 1996 from the Labor Party, had to practically start from scratch and rebuild the skilled trades from the apprenticeship system that the Labor Party had failed to foster. One of the major reasons that we have skills shortages today is that the trade union movement put the kibosh on training young people back in the eighties and nineties. Of course, the big picture now is that instead of having one million people unemployed we have created well over one million jobs in the decade that we have been in power—the decade we have been in office; I understand that a subtle difference is that the Labor Party come to power and the Liberal coalition come to office.

I am qualified to speak on this point because I have been a member of the Australian Workers Union, the police union, the plasterers society, Actors Equity—some people say I should still be in the latter—and the Waterside Workers Federation. I know what the trade union movement is. I know that it only represents 11 per cent of private sector workers. I also know that AWAs, Australian workplace agreements, are very successful. People who are working on an AWA in the Pilbara do not want to go back to the trade union dominated competition between the employer and the employees. They are far better off now. A questionnaire was put out by one of the major miners in the Pilbara; it asked: do you want to go back to that system or are you happy with AWAs? Eighty-four per cent said they wanted to stay with AWAs. And why wouldn’t they? More productivity led to more wages and, strangely, led to more employment in the Pilbara.

The reason we are bringing in skilled workers from overseas is simply that the economy is booming. The economy of Western Australia is the best of the six states and the two territories. It is absolutely and totally booming. The Western Australian Labor government seems to be taking the credit for it. Mr Eric Ripper, the Treasurer of Western Australia, takes the credit for the booming economy in Western Australia. I wonder what the Chinese think about that, when the growth rate in their steel mills for the past 10 years has averaged 25 per cent. It is there to which our ore—not exclusively but significantly—goes from Western Australia. That is the sort of thing that is booming—that causes housing booms, more roads, more bridges and the extension of our freeways, and allows, in some instances, the trade union movement to survive. Had it not been for the boom, the trade union movement would represent less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce.

We bring people in from overseas to try to keep the economy going—to satisfy the demand. We do not bring them in to lower wages. Hansen—one of the companies which is anathema to those on the opposite side—is bringing in skilled migrants, not exclusively but predominantly from the Philippines, and is paying them the wages that the unions demanded. Hansen is paying the same wages to the people that are coming in—what is the beef? What is wrong with keeping the economy going? Don’t you know? I will tell you what you do know: you know that, unless the economy dips seriously, you people on the other side will never see the Treasury bench. And I think that is a good thing. Labor’s proposal for dropping AWAs is the greatest thing that could have happened to the government and guarantees our re-election in a couple of years. Do you think any business in Australia would put up with the dropping of AWAs? (Time expired)