Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is directed to Senator Abetz, representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. How is the Howard government promoting and supporting flexibility and choice in Australian workplaces? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

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

I thank Senator Troeth for her question and note her longstanding interest in the area of workplace relations and her excellent chairmanship of the Senate committee that deals with these issues. The Howard government is committed to supporting choice and flexibility and that is what WorkChoices is all about—allowing employees and their bosses to negotiate working conditions which best suit them; negotiations which, I note, have now seen the creation of over 200,000 new jobs since WorkChoices first came into being. And, might I add, if an employee wants their union, or anyone else for that matter, to assist them in the negotiations, they are entitled to that by law.

The facts show that workers who have availed themselves of this choice to negotiate provided by the Howard government are, on average, better off than those who do not. The facts show that employees who are employed under the terms of an Australian workplace agreement are, on average, 13 per cent better off than those on collective agreements. And yet, if Labor had its way, all those agreements would become illegal; they would, in fact, be ripped up. Worse than that, the Labor Party has now announced that it will make it compulsory for workers to sign up to collective agreements. If just 51 per cent of workers at a workplace want a collective agreement, guess what? The other 49 per cent have to cop it. They have to cop the lowest common denominator; they have to cop, on average, 13 per cent less. They have to cop the union telling them what working conditions they will be lumbered with—paternalism at its very worst, courtesy of Mr Beazley and Labor.

This is, once again, all about the unions. It is about reasserting the power of unions in the workplace—reasserting the unions’ power to barge into a workplace where they are neither wanted nor needed. And it is about reasserting the unions’ power to tell workers what is best for them. It is quite understandable that those on the other side would seek to protect the role of unions and would seek to enhance it. We also agree that unions have a role in workplaces and that they do need to be protected by law. But the big difference, the big divide in Australian politics today, is that those on the other side only want to look after workers who are members of a trade union. That leaves them with only 25 per cent of the Australian workforce, whereas the Liberal-National coalition wants to look after all the workers in this country: the 75 per cent, the huge majority of Australians, that has left the trade union movement behind—and, of course, they are ex-officials of unions on the other side of the chamber—and the other 25 per cent as well.

So what the Australian people will have at the next election is a choice: Mr Beazley, who only wants to look after a discrete 25 per cent of the workforce, or Mr Howard, who will look after the totality of the workforce. With Mr Howard’s stewardship we have not seen one million unemployed as we did under Labor; we have instead seen a 30-year low in the unemployment rate and a real increase in wages of well over 16 per cent. There is no doubt that— (Time expired)