Page 2978 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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The Howard model is quite simple. It is all about lower wages; it is about worse conditions; it is about a massive rise in industrial disputation; it is about the abolition of safety nets; and it is about pushing down or abolishing minimum standards. As a worker, you may have lots of doubts about the things you might lose, but you can be absolutely sure of one thing: John Howard will reduce your living standards.
And what do we find here in 2007? A level of prosperity that is unsurpassed in the last 33 years with the lowest unemployment we have had—the lowest unemployment, in fact, in the country being here in the nation’s capital at 2.5 per cent—wages at record levels, industrial disputation at record lows, and a level of confidence in people in this country in terms of their own employment future that is just extraordinary. We have not seen this situation since the early 1970s when people, as I have said in this place before, could walk out the door and, in fact, pick and choose what job they wanted. Well, we are back in that position, and we are back there thanks to the fact that we have had sound economic management. I know the Labor Party loves to say, “Well, this is somebody else’s credit. It is the mining boom or it is some development overseas.” But, in fact, I was listening to ABC radio earlier on today, and I heard an academic just dismiss that nonsense and say that much of the success has been because of the economic direction this country has enjoyed.
I will go to Mrs Burke’s dissenting comments, and she talks about the committee’s recommendation that the ACT government develop strategies in partnership with community groups to continue to monitor the impact of the WorkChoices legislation on the community. As Mr Smyth said, more of the same; more justification for ongoing doing nothing. As Mrs Burke has pointed out, this recommendation acknowledges that the Office of Industrial Relations is continuing to monitor the impact of workplace legislation in the ACT, and it would have done so irrespective of this recommendation. Similarly various community groups representing employee and employer interests in this territory will monitor the impact of workplace relations legislation on their membership. Neither the ACT government nor community groups needed the select committee on working families to draw this to their attention. It is a very lightweight and disappointing and superfluous recommendation.
Then we have got this other great proposal—the ACT government should lobby the commonwealth government to ensure the comprehensive data on AWAs is gathered and made available. I know that Mr Hockey, the federal minister, will be sitting there waiting for this phone call with advice from Mr Gentleman with his recommendation. But, as Mrs Burke has again pointed out in her recommendations, this is an example of a select committee being overtaken by events. The Workplace Authority recently published the first statistical analysis of the Australian workplace agreements applying to working families—the term that has been missing from the overall recommendations—based on 12,749 agreements at the end of August. Indeed, Mrs Burke then goes on in some detail to explain that analysis and how those agreements were applied against the fairness test. She makes the very good point about what is the purpose and where is the role of this committee in these matters.
We go further into the report and Mrs Burke’s analysis, which she provided for the benefit of the Assembly. The report talks about the safety net provisions, and the
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