Senator GEORGE CAMPBELL (3:26 PM) —The point that Senator Brandis finished on is really the key issue that has been raised by Mr Beaufort. Setting aside whether you argue that we are now lifting 18, 20, 25 or 30 boxes per hour, the fundamental issue here is that Australian exporters are not benefiting one red cent from the process. That clearly demonstrates that all of the rhetoric this government went to the Australian community with a couple of years ago about waterfront reform and the benefits for farmers and exporters was nothing more than that: rhetoric. It was simply there to disguise Mr Reith's real agenda, and that was to smash the unions.

Everybody in this country knows that it was not just the wharfies that were a target and it was not just about increasing the crane rate. Mr Reith had an agenda to go after the wharfies first, then the building industry workers, then the metalworkers, and then the miners. The four unions had been named; there was an agenda put together, and his department was targeting the waterside workers first. Their view was that, if they could beat the waterside workers, they could beat the rest. What was clearly demonstrated was that they could not, and they did not.

Let us get back to the real issue here: what has come out of this process? There really has been waterfront reform in this country. When I first came to this country in 1965 there were over 27,000 wharfies in this country employed on the waterfront. There are fewer than 2,000 today. If that is not a massive productivity achievement and reform over that period of time, I do not know what is. We might argue about some of the elements of that reform and whether it is going at a pace that is appropriate but, nevertheless, you have to say that there has been a massive productivity gain over that period of time. That was done all through that period by negotiations between the stevedoring companies and the waterside unions, without any disruption and without any of the balaclavas or the Dubai warriors; there was none of that. It was all done through a process of negotiation, and change was achieved.

Mr Reith was not interested in reform. Anybody who knows anything about the waterfront in this country knows that it is not the stevedoring companies that determine freight rates. It is not the exporters, and it is not the productivity arrangements on the waterfront. It is the shipping conference. There is collusion between the shippers. Everyone knows the shippers get together and set the rates. They have always been artificially high in this country because they are controlled by two or three multinational companies in the shipping industry. Other small independent operators are forced to comply with those rates. People like Chris Corrigan and P&O Services are their customers, not the exporters and not the farmers.

I happened to be on the Australian Manufacturing Council when a report was made to that council by the then head of the Waterfront Industry Reform Authority on waterfront industry reform. I clearly recall John Prescott, who was then the head of BHP, saying to that meeting of the Australian Manufacturing Council that he would not bring a BHP ship into the port of Melbourne because the stevedoring companies were not passing on the gains they had made. He said he knew that because he operated a stevedoring company. BHP did its own stevedoring. He knew what the reforms were. He knew what savings were being made on the waterfront. He knew where the collusion was and who was ripping the cream off the top. Mr Corrigan has benefited from waterfront reform. Mr McGauchie has benefited from waterfront reform—he is now on the boards of the Reserve Bank and Telstra. Mr Houlahan has benefited from waterfront reform. But have the farmers benefited? No. Have the exporters benefited? No, they have not got one red cent out of this process. If you get up here and argue anything different, you will deliberately mislead people about the real circumstances. (Time expired)