Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Barnett for his question and his commitment to getting more of our fellow Australians into employment. The Howard government has a two-pronged strategy to assist job seekers into work: Work Choices and Welfare to Work. The success of Work Choices in creating new jobs in the Australian economy is now very well documented: 205,000 new jobs—and counting—and, of those, 185,000 are full time. Long-term unemployment in this country now stands at just 245,000, the lowest level in 20 years. Do you know what it was when Mr Beazley was employment minister in May 1993? Have a guess. It was 329,800—74 per cent higher than it is today. Remember all the doom and gloom about Work Choices, but not a single question from those opposite in the past 26 weeks!

So what about Welfare to Work? Let us remember Labor Senator Wong’s assertion about Welfare to Work in this place on 22 June this year. She said:

... the government [is] putting in place the harshest breaching regime that one could probably consider ... a breaching regime which will see 18,000 people without any income support whatsoever for a two-month period.

All the same hysteria as we got on the GST and Work Choices.