Mr BILLSON (10:02 AM) —It is always a pleasure following the member for Griffith. He talks about ideology. He talks about what is inspiring these things, what the motives are. He rarely talks about the content in an accurate way.

Mr Rudd —But I did, Bruce. The middle part of the speech. Didn't you hear it? The middle part of the speech was about the bill.

Mr BILLSON —Let me just knock over a couple of his arguments. This argument that somehow these measures are designed to advantage and favour the employer because of the requirement to have the Industrial Relations Commission hear the employer's point of view on a pattern bargaining claim is quite an amusing one. What the provision is supposed to be doing—

Mr BILLSON —We all know the member for Griffith cannot help himself and needs to keep talking all of the time. There is further evidence of it today. What the member for Griffith failed to point out is that the amendment that is before the parliament today about the commission being obliged to hear from the employer in relation to pattern bargaining claims is actually embedded in an existing framework that provides the rights for employer representatives and employee organisations, like unions, to put their point to the commission. This amendment seeks to say, `If there is a pattern bargaining claim going on and a judgment needs to be made about an employer's capacity to accommodate that pattern bargaining claim, you should listen to the employer, they will have a view.' That does not strike me as being entirely unreasonable.

It just illustrates the absolute bunkum that the member for Griffith has gone with—likewise, his colleague from Queensland, the shadow minister—trying to make it sound as though this amending provision is going to tip the balance in advocacy opportunities before the commission. That is simply garbage. This is an amending provision that is embedded within the existing framework of the Workplace Relations Act that gives the commission a right to hear from a range of parties, including employee representatives. When it comes to determining a question about whether a pattern bargaining claim can be accommodated at an enterprise level this amendment says, `You should take on board what the enterprise thinks.' That does not strike me as unreasonable, and it certainly shows the nonsense of the claims that are being made by those members opposite.

The Workplace Relations Amendment Bill 2000 is another instalment in the coalition government's workplace relations program, which is designed to allow employees and employers to sit down like adults and negotiate improved pay for improved productivity, improved work performance at the enterprise level, and, through that process, pursue the mutual interests of both parties. Time will not permit me to go through the provisions of the Workplace Relations Act that have supported that concept.

The member for Griffith scurries out, having been shown to be quite misrepresentative in his claims about the AIRC. He failed to talk about the benefits of the workplace relations program. The OECD, not always known to be a friend of governments around the world, has said, `Let's have a look at the benefits of the government's program.' Our unemployment rate is projected to decline to 6.4 per cent in the year 2000. Our growth forecasts have been revised up to 3.9 per cent in the year 2000 and 3.7 per cent in the year 2001. Wages are the great embarrassment of the ALP. During its time in the eighties we saw a decline in real wages by an average of 0.2 per cent per annum—a decline in real wages in Labor's 1980s years. Compare this to the last four years under the coalition where we have seen a 2.3 per cent growth in average real wages. That is an impressive performance. Productivity has gone through the roof too in the last four years under these workplace relations arrangements: a 2.8 per cent increase in productivity—double the rate that was achievable in the eighties under Labor.

You hear those opposite talk about what evil has been inflicted on this country through the workplace relations system that has been introduced, but have a look at the results. The results speak for themselves. They have been comprehensively positive in every respect, delivering better outcomes for Australian workers, delivering better productivity in the workplace and delivering more security for all of those that are investing, that are working and that are providing their labour in workplaces across Australia.

What this is about, though, is the enterprise bargaining system, a simple idea that says workplaces and those that are stakeholders in them are best placed to decide how to take that workplace forward, a simple idea where adults can sit down and understand the pressures that are being faced in the workplace and can work with management, can work with investors, can work with employees, can look at what the competitors are doing and can provide a platform for all of them to move forward in mutual benefit so that, as the enterprise becomes more productive and, hopefully, more profitable, the employees can share in that successful outcome. That is what we are talking about today, and we are talking about a threat that is presented to it by this system of pattern bargaining across industries.

We have talked about Campaign 2000 and the impact it will have on the manufacturing sector. Let us stop for a minute and talk about the real lives of people in that sector. In the community I represent, we have a very vibrant and buoyant manufacturing sector whose competitors are not just the bloke next door. It competes with other providers of automotive componentry and high quality electronics gear and the like from around the world. People look at what has happened in the building industry and say, `Well, gee, it has not brought the building industry grinding to a halt'—this pattern bargaining, this muscle flexing, the using of industrial action to make union representatives look good, to support their re-election and further their own little interests. What has happened in the building industry? The thing about the building industry is that, if you want to build something in Australia, you build it in Australia. If you want to build an office building in downtown Melbourne and you are unhappy with the arrangements because of the cost of building it and maybe unreasonable labour demands, you cannot decide, `Gee, I really want to build this building in Melbourne, but I am unhappy about this. I will move it to Auckland.' It does not happen. It is by its very nature a protected industry. If you want to build something in Australia you build it in Australia, and if you are unhappy about the price or the quality of the work or the arrangements for when it will be completed you cannot pack the project up and move it; you have just got to wear it. So people who are involved in the building industry just wear it. They just cop the cost on-flow. That is why the building industry is engaged in these sorts of activities.

The manufacturing sector is now faced with the same pressures, but the climate is different. If unreasonable demands are placed on employers that price them out of competition and out of being competitive, what happens is that we lose the work, we lose the business, we lose the employment and we lose the jobs, and people's chances to provide for their families and themselves go out the door. The manufacturing sector is not a homogeneous area of our economy either. Different pressures are being faced by different segments of the manufacturing industry. Let us take, for instance, automotive componentry. They are engaged in a global competition. If the security systems that go into automobiles that are made by people from the community I represent are not what the market is looking for, they will buy them somewhere else. And if those employers and employees working for their shared mutual benefit cannot sit down and work together to deal not only with the domestic competition but with what is coming in from overseas, they are all out of a job. That is very different from the building industry, where you just cop it or decide whether or not to build it at all. They do not have other competition; they cannot shift the activity offshore, they do not face competitors on an international scale and they do not have to contribute to a global marketplace like the motor car industry does. They do not have to compete with that. But here you have inflicted on an industry this type of one-size-fits-all mentality that might be fine in a protected place like the building industry but which is going to cost jobs—jobs of the people I represent in the manufacturing industry.

Last night we heard the Deputy Prime Minister talk about how, in 1995 under Labor, this great nation of ours, recognised for having some of the world's best technology and high quality manufacturing capacity, exported—how many cars? One. One car. I facetiously said that maybe it was Jack Nasser's as he went over to the United States. Now, in the last 12 months, you are talking about 30,000 or 40,000 models coming out of the major assemblers in this country. It is world-class product: competitive and able to strut its stuff in the global marketplace. And that means jobs—not only for people who are assembling those cars but for the people in my electorate who work in the automotive component industry. Last year the automotive component industry had $2 billion worth of exports—$2 billion worth of real jobs—because those industries were able to sit down and effectively work through their issues in the workplace, where the stakeholders could join together and say, `Here are the pressures we are facing. How can we best cope with these competitive pressures? What can we do to improve our productivity? How can we make sure we are not only holding onto our market share here but also expanding and taking our product out to the world?' Through that shared benefit and mutual interest at the workplace, they were able to take account of those conditions and move forward with a set of workplace arrangements that suited their conditions and the operating environment they were in. Through the flexibility these workplace arrangements offer, they had a chance to do what was right for that business and all its stakeholders, including the employees.

You hear those opposite stand here and say, `Let's look after the workers.' Why don't you actually do something about it, though? Rather than perpetually flap your gums about it and then do nothing to back them up when their enterprises become insolvent—and we have got to do that as well—why don't you work to deliver real wage increases? The coalition has done that for the working men and women of Australia. Their jobs matter and their workplaces matter and, if we do not give a workplace the flexibility to deal with the conditions in which they function and compete so that it can be a prosperous workplace delivering improved wages, salaries and conditions for the people that work in it and some return for the people who put their money on the line to try and provide these investment and employment opportunities, there is something wrong. Those opposite have to ask themselves: are they driven by pure ideology? Are they driven by the militant unions? In Gary Gray's last comments before he moved on, he was actually saying that the union movement and the Labor Party were one and the same—`We have got to be pals.' That is okay, but don't come in here just parroting garbage about `This is an attack on workers' when you do not take into account for one minute the actual worker. The coalition government's amendment says that pattern bargaining across industries that have different competitive conditions, different opportunities, different pressures and different interests in the workplace cannot work. We are trying to make sure that people can pursue those differences at the workplace level so that everybody can prosper, so that the workers' jobs can be made secure through improved productivity, so that better standards of living can be achieved through increases in average wages—as has been delivered by the coalition since it was elected—and so that employers and those who invest in those businesses have some prospect of getting a return. That, at the end of the day, is the job creation cycle. If there is nothing to make, no market to service and no-one to invest, no-one has a job.

I wish those opposite would realise that this is about protecting workers' opportunity to have a job and hopefully giving more people an opportunity to gain employment in forward looking, productive areas of our economy like the manufacturing industry, as evidenced by the figures Minister Anderson shared at the dinner last night. Do yourselves a favour and look after some workers. Give them the chance to work with their employers to carve out a better future that takes account of the particular pressures they are facing. Do not allow yourselves to be bumped off line by the bunkum that this is somehow an attack on unions. It is not at all. Unions have a good place. I used to be a union member. They have a place in our economy. One in five people in the private sector think they have a place. That is okay. This is not about attacking them; this is about giving the workplace a chance to succeed and not laying a one-size-fits-all solution across a manufacturing sector that is so diverse. A few of you need to go out, have a look at it and understand that point. You would find out how ridiculous your argument is against the legislation before the parliament at the moment. In the interests of all workers in the manufacturing industry, I urge you to give them the chance to succeed. That is what enterprise bargaining is about. I support the bill before the House.