Ms WORTH —My question is addressed to the Minister for Industrial Relations. Is the minister aware of recent announcements by senior figures in the labour movement about changes in industrial relations policy? What are these changes, and how would they affect Australian workers? What is the government's reaction to such changes?

Mr REITH —I thank the honourable member for Adelaide for her question. I appreciate her interest in industrial relations reform. I have seen these remarks. I think they are quite significant. They are the remarks of the shadow minister for industrial relations, who said in Adelaide on 8 March:

There is a contrast between saying enterprise bargaining is an important option and moving to the point that the only way in which living standards can even be maintained for most Australian workers is through continuing rounds of enterprise bargaining.

I think it is an important statement, and it was declared an important statement by the shadow minister himself, who said that it was a very big change in Labor's approach to industrial relations. You know it is very big and important in the Labor Party because Jennie George endorsed the statement the next morning on television.

I suppose the nub of it is that the opposition's longstanding policy position in industrial relations has been that enterprise bargaining should be the centrepiece of the system and that that is the way in which the system should develop in the future. What they have done now is downgrade all of that to say merely that it is an option. We all know that in the labour movement, if you have an option, the people who will run the show are basically the ACTU because they are always in favour of a legislative framework which gives the unions the majority control in a lot of situations.

The contrast in what they are now saying with what they were saying in government is very stark indeed. For example, the member for Kingsford Smith, in October 1993, when introducing their last reforms which had as a key part enterprise bargaining, said:

This legislation marks the culmination of the government's break with the past—our move as a nation from a centralised to a decentralised—

Dr Theophanous —Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. The question related to industrial relations policy, not to the question of past policies. It is not an issue about which the minister is responsible. You should get him to sit down. He should talk about the current industrial relations—

Mr SPEAKER —Order! There is no point of order. Resume your seat.

Mr REITH —The question asked what was the effect on workers. I can tell you that we do consider that to be a responsibility of this government. In fact, that is a big contrast to what we had when you were in government when, quite frankly, the interests of the workers were the last thing on your mind.

What that quote shows is that Labor moved to enterprise bargaining as the centrepiece of their scheme. The reason they did so was in their very own statements. Prior to the last election they said that the reason you would move to an enterprise based system in industrial relations was that it could produce dramatic gains in productivity and better paid and more secure jobs for workers. That is the reason you would do it. So why is it that they are now moving away from it? The then Labor government, in its platform for the last election, said that the Industrial Relations Reform Act entrenches workplace bargaining as the centrepiece of Australia's industrial relations system.

The reality is that Labor has moved away from that which it said was important. It follows a long history. Before the 1990 election they were opposed to enterprise bargaining, but after the election they moved to implement it. In the 1993 election they were opposed to our policy to further it, but after the 1993 election Keating endorsed it. In the 1996 election they were in favour of enterprise bargaining, and after the election they are now apparently opposed to it. The reality is that they are not interested in the welfare of Australian workers. There is only one explanation for this shift, and that is that it is an opportunistic shift which they think might curry them with some favour, particularly with the ACTU.

This government is determined and resolved. We have shifted the system further back to the workplace to give workers a greater opportunity to have a say in the way in which their workplaces are run but, most importantly, a chance to introduce those work practices that will both retain their jobs and give them a chance of higher pay.