Mr RANDALL —My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of the attitude of business leaders to the government's industrial relations reform package? How important are the new industrial relations improvements to the prospects of jobs for Australians?

Mr HOWARD —In the context of the honourable member's question, it is worth noting to the House that today there is a meeting taking place between a number of employer organisations and the Minister for Industrial Relations. I am advised that this particular gathering represents an unprecedented meeting of the nation's employer organisations. It is the largest gathering of those employer organisations in the parliament for something like 10 or 12 years. It includes the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council of Australia, the Metal Trades Industry Association, the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Chamber of Manufactures, the Australian Hotels Association, the Confederation of ACT Industry, the Housing Industry Association, the Motor Traders Association, and so the list goes on. It is in fact the biggest congregation of employer representatives to occur in Canberra for more than a decade. They have come together to express their strong support for the strategy enshrined in the government's workplace relations bill.

The reason that I emphasise this is that for the 13 years that the Labor Party was in power it was very fond of quoting large and small business organisations, when they thought they could, in support of their industrial relations strategy. Yet the truth is that the employer organisations of this country recognise that, with the passage of the workplace relations bill, there will be a sharp increase in job opportunities in this country.

Mr Crean interjecting—

Mr HOWARD —He says it is unbelievable. Don't you agree that if you repeal the unfair dismissal laws, you are going to remove an impediment to employment by small business? The people who are going to gather here this afternoon and anybody who understands the operation of small business in Australia will know that the repeal of the unfair dismissal law—Laurie's now half invalid unfair dismissal law, a law that he did not tell anybody about before the 1993 election, a law that has intimidated many small business men and women all around Australia from taking on more staff—will remove one of the major disincentives to the recruitment of labour by small firms all around Australia. And so the list goes on.

A joint statement has been put out by this unprecedented gathering of employer organisations. This is what it says:

Passage of the bill will benefit employees. The bill contains extensive provisions to take into account and to protect the interests of all employees. The bill is moderate rather than radical, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and balanced in its approach.

I could not have put it better myself. This bill is not an attack on trade unions. It is not an attack on workers. It is a pro-freedom, pro-jobs bill. Those who vote against the thrust of this bill are not interested in job generation. They are committing themselves to maintenance of the unsatisfactorily high level of unemployment and they are not interested in generating the cooperative workplace relationship that ought to exist between employers and employees in Australia. The more the members of the Labor Party interject on this issue, the more they proclaim their insensitivity on the crucial economic issue of labour market deregulation.