Dr SOUTHCOTT (3:26 PM) —This week we have seen that the opposition claims on Spotlight and on Esselte have not stacked up, but let us recap some of the other claims made by the Leader of the Opposition about the government’s workplace relations reforms. The Leader of the Opposition has said that under these reforms there will be more divorce. He has said that the weekend barbecue is about to become a thing of the past. He has said that neighbour will be set against neighbour in a dog-eat-dog world. These claims are not credible. They belong in the rubbish bin along with the claims made by the member for Perth back in 1995. They have not eventuated.

The topic of today’s motion is looking at a sample of four per cent of AWAs which were lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate, but the Leader of the Opposition has quoted selectively from these. He has failed to say that 84 per cent of the agreements in the sample had a greater rate of pay than under the award. What are Australian workplace agreements? They are agreements between employee and employer. They are selective to the enterprise and to the business. They must meet minimum standards—the Australian Fair Pay and Condition standard. No employee can be forced to sign an AWA; no employee can be terminated for refusing to sign an AWA. The most recent ABS survey showed that employees on AWAs earn, on average, 13 per cent more than employees covered by certified agreements and 100 per cent more than those on award rates.

The opposition fails to recognise the important changes that have occurred in the Australian workplace over the last 20 years. Whereas in the mid-1980s half of workers were members of trade unions, now just 22.4 per cent of the workplace are members of unions. In the private sector, only 16.8 per cent of people are members of unions. In the years from 1998 to 2004, the number of self-employed persons grew by a quarter of a million and trade union membership declined by 200,000 persons. There are now more independent contractors than union members.

When we look at the performance of the Australian economy under the government’s initial workplace relations reforms, we now see in the employment figures for May that the unemployment rate has fallen below five per cent for the first time since November 1976. But, at the same time, the participation rate rose. That means that more people were looking for work. The number of people employed increased by 56,000—all full-time jobs—and 38,000 of those were women; 1.8 million new jobs have been created since March 1996; and real wages are up by 16.8 per cent.

What has happened over the last 10 years is that a strong economy has led to shortages of skilled and unskilled labour. This means that workers are now in a very strong bargaining position. Workplace relations reform to introduce flexibility into the workplace so that we could get improvements in the economy was something that was always too hard for the Australian Labor Party. That is understandable. It is their history. It is their background. It is their training. The trade union movement has this vicelike grip on the Australian Labor Party. We have exhibit A, the member for Hotham, and exhibit B, the member for Throsby, the previous speaker. The problem is that there are now almost a million people on AWAs.

Ms George —There are not; that is not true.

Dr SOUTHCOTT —It is—almost a million people on AWAs. There is no greater authority on this than the Leader of the Opposition, who said, ‘There will be a million AWAs in place when we come into office and you can’t wander around cancelling contracts.’ Exactly! This is a promise that the Labor Party is unable to deliver on. We have seen workers in Western Australia and in Queensland in a whole range of industries who like their AWAs and who want to stay on their AWAs. If we look at my own state of South Australia, we find there are 2,000 people on AWAs at Olympic Dam. Roxby Downs has one of the highest income rates of any postcode in South Australia. There are over 9,000 people on AWAs in the electorate of Boothby. I think this is a big mistake by the Labor Party. This is a mistake akin to the ‘troops home by Christmas’ promise by Mark Latham.

The problem here is that the government has a very different vision of Australia from that of the opposition. We have an optimistic view of employers and employees and the way they can work cooperatively for mutual benefit. That is a view shared by the vast majority of aspirational Australians. It is a view shared by the vast majority of workers. We believe that workers should have choice, that they should have freedom to choose. AWAs are a very important strand of the workplace arrangements in this country, which will lead to further improvements in the economy.