Page 1090 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 16 March 2005
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to casual employment. The fact of the matter is that that is what a lot of people want to do in this country.
I believe there is a lot of demand for permanent employment. In fact, if there were not so much demand for permanent employment, we would not have to be going offshore now to recruit people. Indeed, in the hotel industry, again, even with the agreement of the LHMWU, keeping in mind a union supported proposal, we had authority given to us to bring in 1,000 chefs from overseas. We could not recruit people here locally. The fact is that a large percentage of the work force wants flexible working hours; they want casual employment. The union movement really does not care about these people. They are worried about the permanents, and the casuals they are not so interested in at all. So they are not the flavour of the month but in reality they make up most of the work force in this country in a number of industries such as hospitality and retail. We have got to recognise that those people have rights and interests too.
If the ACTU and their affiliates continue to hold on to a past perception of what the work force is all about, they will find themselves very quickly out of touch with the market. Indeed, the greatest barometer in my view is membership of unions or membership of employer groups. When the numbers are falling in either group, it means usually that they have lost contact with the people whom they purport to represent. We have had a progressive fall in numbers over the years in many unions, because people do not relate to them. Young people are articulate and they are not interested in the old ways of the past.
I recall being out here on Commonwealth Avenue some years ago when we talked about awards. Union officials drove down from Sydney and called a strike on the housekeeping staff, many of whom were not so familiar with the Australian methods; a lot of them were new arrivals in our country. They were simply moved around and directed what to do and had no say in what was going on.
The truth is, though, that the nature of the work force in Australia has changed. But what has also changed is that we are in a much stronger economic position now. We certainly would not support any view that we do not deserve increases, but those increases have to be within a level that can be managed. We do not want to provide fuel for the Reserve Bank, the central bank, to say, “Let’s increase interest rates.” The Chief Minister earlier today was quite wrong in saying that they operate under riding instructions. They make their decisions independently of Australian governments, but it is important that we not provide the factors that will in fact lead to them increasing interest rates, because it is increases in interest rates that will hurt families in Canberra and hurt businesses in Canberra. The very people whom the government are telling us are the ones whom they are most concerned about—those working poor—are the ones who will first wear the brunt of increased interest rates. They are the ones who are living on credit cards. They are the ones who have got high mortgages or are going to be faced with rents going up because landlords have got to service a high level of debt. So you do not do them a great service by supporting runaway claims. You do support their interests by supporting moderate claims and I urge the minister to apply that philosophy rather than simply jump to the instructions that come from all the other state Labor governments.
We have heard this talk about a minimum wage being, US style, $3 an hour. I heard Bob Carr the other night on that. I know Bob Carr lived in America about 20-odd years
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