Page 318 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Well I recall those years when, under Hawke and Keating, 50 per cent or so of teenagers seeking work were unemployed. That number has gone done considerably.
The unemployment rate in December 1992 generally was 10.9 per cent, leaving 900,000 Australians unemployed. We are down to 4.3 per cent, and even lower in the ACT. That is pretty good. Retrenchments are 59 per cent less than they were in February 1999. Real wages under the coalition government have grown by 3.5 per cent per annum, compared with a 1.7 per cent decrease under Labor.
Non-managerial employees on Australian workplace agreements are earning, on average, nine per cent more each week than employees on a registered collective agreement and 94 per cent more than employees paid according to awards. Those are pretty impressive statistics. Since March 2006, 266,000 Australian workplace agreements have been lodged, and 1,166,000 have been lodged since 1997. Those figures are very, very impressive. The participation rate of our young people is now the second highest in OECD countries.
Do not talk to me about WorkChoices being a bad thing. It has some significant improvements. Recently we have seen prosecutions, not so much in the local building industry but in relation to the food industry, in restaurants, and that indicates just how effective these laws can be. They actually give workers a considerable amount of choice and a strong bargaining position. Our employment figures are something to be proud of. Clearly, the workplace laws help workers rather than hinder them.
One of the big beneficiaries, of course, is small business. Yes, it may be easier to get rid of some workers, but before then it was very difficult to get rid of people who simply did not want to work and were obstructionists. It was very, very hard, especially for small business, and a lot of people simply were not employed because small business did not have the necessary degree of flexibility to get rid of workers who were not pulling their weight and were dragging the group down, which you cannot do. These laws have enabled a lot more people to be employed, and that is a pretty impressive statistic. It is important that the lot on the other side get over their hang-ups in relation to the new workplace laws.
That being said, I will get back to the fundamental point. I do not think anyone in this Assembly would want to see people get injured. I think everyone here would want to ensure that, as far as is humanly possible, good safety precautions are in place in our workplaces. I think my amendments will help along those lines and I commend them to the Assembly.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.15): In response to Mr Stefaniak, may I just observe that, no, I do not think this side of politics will get over our objections to WorkChoices. I think they are very well grounded objections and they are objections that we will continue to hold. Obviously the issues will be decided in the forthcoming federal election, but we, locally and federally, will continue to oppose WorkChoices, and I do not think that you should expect that we will get over that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .