Mrs MARKUS (3:22 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister inform the House how a flexible workplace relations system is contributing to more and better jobs for working women? Are there any threats to this contribution?

Mr HOCKEY (Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —I thank the member for Greenway for that question. I note that in 1996 the unemployment rate in Greenway was 8.8 per cent; today it is 4.2 per cent. It was 8.8 per cent unemployment in Greenway at a time when the Labor Party were running the industrial relations system hand in glove with the trade union bosses—the same trade union bosses and the same industrial relations system that the Labor Party want to take us back to should they be elected to government.

Under the reforms made by the Howard government in the last 14 months alone, 326,000 new jobs have been created, 45 per cent of those jobs going to women and 85 per cent of those jobs being full time. The female participation rate in Australia is near an all-time high of 57.7 per cent compared with the 53.7 per cent when we came to government in 1996, and the wages gap between men and women has narrowed under the Howard government. In 1996 women were earning 87 per cent of male earnings and today it is 89.4 per cent, despite the fact that there has been a significant increase in the number of women going into the lower paid industries such as retail and hospitality compared with male dominated industries such as mining and construction, where there are higher wages. In addition, the government has provided over $28 billion in family-friendly initiatives, such as the baby bonus, the family tax benefit and the childcare tax rebate, which help to provide flexibility and give women options when they want to return to the workforce.

That has not come about by accident. It has come about because of the economic reform undertaken by this government—and opposed all the way by the Labor Party. The Labor Party opposed us on the first wave of industrial relations reform in 1996, which created Australian workplace agreements. If you believe the Labor Party, AWAs have been around for only 15 months, yet they have been around since 1996. In a modern workplace, people want the flexibility provided by Australian workplace agreements. The old industrial relations system set up under Labor—managed by the Labor Party for the union bosses—was so inflexible that it drove a lot of women to become casual workers, and it drove a lot of men to become independent contractors because the mainstream industrial relations system could not accommodate the needs and aspirations of those people. So we changed the system. We put in place a flexible mainstream system that brought people who wanted flexibility into the mainstream industrial relations system, and that delivered flexibility.

So when you go to Port Macquarie and meet women who have been employed for 13 years as casuals and who for the first time get a contract that they can go and borrow money against because the AWA is flexible enough to give them the mainstream contract, you say, ‘Isn’t that good news for families? Isn’t that good news for women?’ That is the flexibility in the mainstream system that gives women the opportunity to get a job. It helps them to shape, in negotiation with employers, family-flexible hours. Do you know what else? It is delivering higher wages, fewer strikes and more jobs. That is what our system does. That is what economic reform does. Opposed all the way by the Labor Party, our workplace reforms have delivered the flexibility that is empowering women in the workforce in a way that we have never seen before in Australia’s history.