Dr WASHER (2:49 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister advise the House what impact the removal of unfair dismissal laws has had on small business? Are there any alternative policies?

Mr HOCKEY (Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —I thank the member for Moore for his question and note that unemployment in his electorate is now 2.2 per cent. I say that not just because it is a good figure; I say it because it is great that people have jobs. The coalition believe that the best welfare that you can provide to the nation is the opportunity for members of the family to have a job. We believe that is vitally important. When Mr Keating, as Labor Prime Minister, and the then head of the ACTU did a deal in 1993 to introduce the unfair dismissal laws, they had no regard at all—

Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting—

Mr HOCKEY —Were you involved? He was!

Mr Howard —The sheepish Martin!

Mr HOCKEY —He is going red. I think he was involved. They had no regard at all for the impact on jobs. The coalition warned of the impact that it would have on small business and the creation of jobs—and it was not just the coalition. A 1996 Morgan & Banks survey showed that one-quarter of all small businesses were affected by Labor’s laws and 14 per cent of small businesses had hired fewer staff as a result of the unfair dismissal laws. In 1998 the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, COSBOA, estimated that 50,000 jobs would be created in Australia if we could abolish the unfair dismissal laws as they applied to small business. In 2002 a Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research study estimated that the laws introduced by the Labor Party and the ACTU cost a staggering $1.3 billion. It predicted that if we removed the laws it would create 77,000 jobs. There was an ACCI survey in 2003, and so on.

Mr Speaker, you might ask: since we introduced the Work Choices laws in March last year, what has been the impact? In the March to December period of 2005, 90,000 jobs were created. In the same period in 2006, after we removed the unfair dismissal laws in their application to small business, 245,000 jobs were created. So, from having 90,000 jobs before then, when the Labor Party and ACTU unfair dismissal laws were in place, in the same period in 2006 it went up to 245,000 jobs. Certainly, not every one of those jobs can be credited to the abolition of unfair dismissal laws. But, fundamentally, we are about putting in place the infrastructure, putting in place the laws, that create well-paid jobs that give people careers in the modern Australian workplace.

Not only do the Labor Party and the ACTU have an agenda to rip up those laws, but current ACTU policy says that the new laws that the Labor Party will have in a Rudd Labor government will go further, to cover casuals at all levels and a whole range of other workers who previously did not have the unfair dismissal laws. We are about job creation. We are about well-paid jobs. The Labor Party, in partnership with the ACTU, is about destroying jobs, particularly in small business.