Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, let us actually look at the employment figures that are on the public record, those produced by the ABS. Let us look at the two years prior to Work Choices. Let us look at employment growth for the first 11 months of Work Choices. It was 2.6 per cent. Since the introduction of Work Choices—Senator Abetz uses very careful language—employment growth has been by 2.6 per cent. But what was it for the two years prior to the introduction of Work Choices? Strangely enough, according to the ABS, employment growth was by 3.9 per cent prior to Work Choices. So, if we actually want to look at the impact of Work Choices, we can argue, based on the statistics that are in front of us, that Work Choices is actually retarding the growth of employment in this country. For those opposite to argue that Work Choices is any way responsible for the growth of employment belies the fact of the massive resources boom that we are having, the insatiable appetite of the rest of the world for our natural resources and the significant natural employment growth that had been happening before that.

Senator Abetz would not want the true statistics. He would not want the Office of the Employment Advocate or anyone else to seriously look at AWAs, because the government want to fly blind and to be able to make grandiose statements about what has happened since the introduction of Work Choices, not because of the introduction of Work Choices. He will use any form of statistics to try to bolster their argument. The problem for the government, Senator Abetz, is that people know and feel and see  that. They know people who are being screwed by Work Choices and are losing their wages, losing their conditions—