Mr BEAZLEY —My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that yesterday in the Senate Senator Harradine, in relation to Minister Reith's failure to honour his deal regarding youth wages, said:

It means that at least half of this Senate cannot accept from this government at face value what it says . . . the word of certain ministers cannot be taken at face value.

Prime Minister, if Senator Harradine cannot trust the word of your minister, why should young Australians trust him not to cut their wages and attack their job security?

Mr HOWARD (Prime Minister) —In the long years that I have been in public life I have rarely met a person of greater integrity than the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. The minister for workplace relations continues to enjoy my total confidence. This government deals in facts, and the fact is that the vote in the Senate yesterday was a blow to the job prospects of thousands of young Australians. The vote in the Senate yesterday was a recognition by those who sit opposite us, and others, that they have no alternative strategies to deal with youth unemployment. It was a reminder of the extent to which the Labor Party in particular is bereft of any policy—the extent to which the Labor Party, which has now been in opposition for three years, has spent no time over that three-year period in developing alternative policies. It merely falls back onto the old remedies and, in the face of repeated attempts by this government to do things to improve the job prospects of young Australians, merely lifts its hands and casts its vote at the direction of the trade union bosses who continue to dominate it.