Mr CHARLES (5:53 PM) —The ALP is finally out of the black box. We have been talking in this place month after month about waterfront reform. Why? Because we have Jurassic Park in Melbourne, in Sydney, in Adelaide, in Brisbane and in Perth. The Australian Labor Party does not want to talk about it. At two o'clock today, the grand old ALP came out of the box and decided to talk about waterfront reform. Why? Because Patricks sacked their work force.

The member for Canberra (Mr McMullan), who has just exited the chamber after that little stunt, forgot to tell the House that this seven-day injunction is not against Patricks; it is against the companies in liquidation only, and I am advised that it is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever. It is all a bit of a fraud perpetrated on this House by the member for Canberra in the middle of a debate about waterfront reform.

What is this issue really all about? It is about competition—the fact that we do not have any. Why do we not have competition on the waterfront? I will tell you why: we have a monopoly supply of labour. I think that almost every citizen in this country understands what a monopoly is—it is a single source of supply. That is what the Maritime Union of Australia is. It is a single source of supply of labour to the waterfront. There is no competition.

Part XA of the Workplace Relations Act 1996, relating to freedom of association, states the object of the part in division 1—preliminary—section 298A. It states:

As well as the objects set out in section 3, this Part has these objects:

(a) to ensure that employers, employees and independent contractors are free to join industrial associations of their choice or not to join industrial associations; and

(b) to ensure that employers, employees and independent contractors are not discriminated against or victimised because they are, or are not, members or officers of industrial associations.

It is clear. All this government has done in the Workplace Relations Act 1996 is do what I have argued for many years should be done—that is, put in the law true freedom of association. So they are giving individuals not only the right to belong but also the right not to belong. But you cannot get a job on the waterfront if you do not have an MUA ticket. They will not let you through the gate. The only way that we are going to remove that monopoly power of the MUA—

Mr Melham —Monopoly power?

Mr CHARLES —That monopoly power which costs every Australian citizen hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year in lost productivity, in higher costs and in lost opportunity and thousands upon thousands of jobs. The only way we are going to fix that is to get some competition.

The member for Melbourne (Mr Tanner) gave the most pathetic MPI lead speech I have heard in this place for a long, long time. He was about as enthusiastic as a wet blessed noodle. He said, `You, the Liberal Party, should treat people as individuals.' That is exactly what the Workplace Relations Act 1996 was intended to do. It is to treat people as individuals, not as collectives. The MUA is a collective. It is a single source, monopolistic collective to the detriment of performance on the waterfront.

So what do you do about it? Then came Patricks Stevedoring. Finally, there is a company with the guts, the legislative action and the legal sanctions to take some action to get some improvement. I can tell you that, except for this Jurassic Park Labor Party mob sitting over there, on a few little cross benches that they occupy, the rest of Australia is applauding Patricks for finally having the guts to do something about reform of the water front. It is paying people decent wages, offering them decent conditions and giving them safe work practices and workplaces in order to do a job that needs to be done.

I tell you what: winning international awards year after year for poor performance does absolutely nothing for Australia's international reputation. Not only that, it also does nothing for our cost structure as a trading nation. That point needs to be made strongly over and over again. With the exception of the coal industry, which we still have a bit of a problem with, and the building construction industry, which could open up their work sites to individuals who do not want to belong to a trade union—we need some improvement on that front—the rest of Australian industry have democracy in their workplaces.

The important point that I make is that we are giving individuals choice. But this mob over there somehow expects us to believe that retaining the MUA as a single source of labour on the docks, on the wharves, in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth is for the good of all Australia. The member for Werriwa (Mr Latham) had a few words to say about this. I believe he launched his book today; it is well and truly launched. The member for Werriwa says:

The politics of nostalgia offers nothing more than a chimera of false comfort and expectations.

Well said. That is so applicable to this waterfront problem that we have. I hesitate to talk about a `dispute' because I understand the workers have been sacked, so how could there be a dispute? I could be wrong because there is some uncertainty about the effect of this injunction. The member for Werriwa also went on to say:

There is something frightfully immoral about those in public life who know full well that the past is undeliverable yet because the electorate sometimes seeks shelter from insecurity by reviving impressions of how society used to be—

what Jurassic Park used to be—

they still proceed to throw back to the policies of the past and hold out false hope for the way in which nostalgia might somehow resolve the problems of the present.

That is what we have. We have on the wharves in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth work practices that date back to the earlier part of this century. We have over-manning, we have rorts, we have practices which are out of kilter with mainstream Australia.

The wharfies come up and campaign against me in my electorate. We do not have a drop of water, except for a couple of reservoirs and one creek. Outside of that we do not have any water. We have heaps of trees everywhere, but we have the waterside workers in favour of the Australian Labor Party coming to my electorate to campaign against me. Why don't they spend their time doing something productive on the wharves and shifting a few containers? That might be a good idea, might it not, instead of nicking off, going slow and not doing anything until the overtime shift comes so that they can be paid double, triple and quadruple? That is not fair to other Australians. The member for Werriwa went on:

The cause of Labor is never weaker than when the Party has nothing more progressive to offer the electorate than a revival of ideas long past.

He said it well again, and it is so applicable to this MPI today. May I say that the member for Melbourne, who proposed this matter of public importance, `the mass sackings on Australia's waterfront', came in here like a wet noodle, a limp piece of spaghetti, offered some implausible statement about sackings of the poor workers on the waterfront and disappeared from the chamber. It was a matter of such public importance he could not even stay to hear the debate. The member for Melbourne is nothing more than a joke to bring this issue in front of the parliament. He ought to have known better.(Time expired)

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. J.A. Crosio) —Order! The time allotted for this discussion has now expired.