Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The consequences of those higher costs, higher strikes, more disruption will be, as Senator Duniam said, lost jobs. There will be fewer jobs in the Australian economy and higher costs for businesses. Contrary to what the government claims, it's not going to help productivity. It's going to hurt productivity when you've got businesses tied up in red tape and dealing with strikes. Productivity will go down and costs will go up. Will that help or hurt inflation? It will drive inflation and it will make a difficult situation, a real problem, even worse. The government's actions will make the problem worse. They should be listening to the Reserve Bank. They should be listening to the experts. They should be listening to any business across the country, not just as I've heard in this chamber this week but, remarkably, in the other place. When the Minister for Small Business was asked to name one small business—just one—who supported the government's extreme IR bills, guess what? She couldn't name even one—not even one.

As if the chaos from the hapless management of the industrials relations built by the government isn't bad enough, we've been exposed in recent days to the work of the Assistant Treasurer and the way he is conducting his negotiations on the financial accountability regime bill. He seems to be changing position on that bill on a daily basis and doing it all through the media. One day there are new fines, the next day those fines are being taken away. Where is the certainty for Australian business? Where is the certainty for Australian investors? What on earth is this government doing? Well, they're making these mistakes because of the undue haste and because they are dancing to the tune of their union masters. That's why these mistakes are happening. The IR bill is no doubt full of other mistakes that are yet to be exposed because of the rushed approach. The financial services bill is also being changed on a day-to-day basis because the government is dancing to the tune of others. It's trying to twist around to make sure it keeps the unions happy and the industry super funds happy. They're telling them to go harder, go faster on these reforms. But they're not doing their homework and so not getting it right, and as a consequence Australians are going to face higher costs, fewer jobs, a weaker economy. And we won't stand for it.