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

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Senator Abetz. Will the minister update the Senate on the latest employment figures? What do these figures say about the Howard government’s job-creating Work Choices industrial relations policy? 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 the chair of the relevant Senate committee, Senator Troeth, for her very important question. As Senator Minchin has already mentioned, today’s official September job statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that Australia’s unemployment rate remains at a record 30-year low of 4.8 per cent. This has been achieved while the participation rate rose to a record high of 65.1 per cent. So in other words more people than ever are in the job market yet the unemployment rate did not rise.

The question is: how can this be so? It can be so because, in the month of September, another 31,400 new jobs were created—comprising, interestingly enough, a slight decline of part-time jobs of 4,600 but a massive increase of 36,000 in full-time jobs. So not only do we have more jobs; we have more full-time jobs. Indeed, full-time jobs are replacing part-time and casual jobs.

Senator Troeth asked what these figures say about the Howard government’s job-creating Work Choices policy. Simply, Work Choices is creating jobs. Work Choices is working. Work Choices is your right to work. Let us put this into context. For 23 months before the introduction of Work Choices, unemployment oscillated between five and 5.3 per cent. It took the job-creating Work Choices to break the five per cent barrier and keep it there for some six months now. The simple facts are that, since Work Choices was introduced, a massive 205,000 new jobs have been created, 164,000 of those full time.

But do you remember Mr Beazley’s mantra? Work Choices was going to destroy jobs; there would be mass sackings. They are very quiet now, aren’t they, in the face of the facts. It is no coincidence that this massive growth in full-time jobs coincides with the abolition of Labor’s job-destroying so-called unfair dismissal regime, which was responsible for the casualisation in the workforce.

It has been a while, so let’s have another ‘Who said it?’. Who said this a few years ago, bemoaning the casualisation of our workforce:

Our work force is more ... casualised ... We have the second highest level of casual employment in the developed world.

You have guessed it. It was Mr Beazley, in 2000. In 2000, the Leader of the Opposition was bemoaning a situation which his policies helped create and which of course our policies are now rectifying.

If you want a test—a cut-through, objective test—of whether or not Work Choices is working, you do not have to look only at the 205,000 new jobs as a very important statistic. There is another very important statistic: the glum look on the faces of those opposite—and, more importantly, that for the last 22 weeks the Labor Party in this place have failed to ask a single question about Work Choices. It is the big, election-winning issue and they have been unable to ask a question for the last 22 weeks. Do you know why? It is because they know they would be hit with the facts and figures. (Time expired)