Page 3832 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 October 2005
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Record periods of economic growth have underpinned all of these good things. I do not think the Labor Party federally seeks anymore to make the argument that things have not improved in the last nine or 10 years of the Howard government. So, in terms of making people’s lives better, the record has been good.
All we have heard said today is, “We’ll all be rooned.” That is exactly what we heard in 1996. Mr Mulcahy referred to the shadow IR spokesman for the federal Labor Party talking about how life as we knew it would come to an end under the 1996 changes. The 1996 changes have underpinned the economic growth, the increase in real wages, and the low interest rates that we have experienced over the last nine years. In fact, they have now been embraced by Katy Gallagher and by Simon Corbell. I heard Katy Gallagher saying yesterday that the system is good—the system that Labor told us just nine years ago would ruin us and that the unions told us just nine years ago would ruin us. That has not happened. So you need to take with a grain of salt the doomsaying of the ACTU and the Labor Party, both federally and in the ACT, and expressed in Ms Porter’s motion.
Ms Gallagher: Of the church, the Salvation Army, the archbishops, the cardinal. Everyone else is wrong.
MR SESELJA: You can selectively quote whomever you like, but the facts speak for themselves. We are seeing a bit of that in Ms Porter’s motion.
In terms of the substance of the motion, I found it difficult to understand at first. I note it has been reworded, which has been helpful. The motion talks about spending $100 million of the taxpayers’ money. That is another assertion of the ACTU. We have seen no evidence that there is going to be anywhere near that amount of money spent. It is just another one that is being thrown around. It is a nice round figure, $100 million. Wonderful! No-one believes it. You can put whatever you like in a motion. No doubt, this one is going to get up because the government will support it and I am sure that Dr Foskey will support it, but there is no evidence that the amount will be $100 million. It is just being thrown around that the amount will be $100 million.
I want to focus a little on public servants and AWAs. Katy Gallagher speaks against AWAs and the Labor Party’s position certainly is against AWAs, and they say that moving people to individual contracts will see their working conditions diminished. One of the main areas in which we have seen AWAs used has been in the federal public service. I was on an AWA when I was in the federal public service. I was on an AWA and my pay went up. I had generous leave provisions.
Ms Gallagher: Looked after yourself, did you?
MR SESELJA: No, all the people in the federal public service were flocking to them. We are told that they are a terrible thing and we should not have them. You see your wages go up and your conditions maintained, yet the Labor Party rails against them. So the Labor Party would like to see us go back to the pre-AWA days. What we have seen under AWAs, as opposed to awards, is a 100 per cent difference in wages. There has been a 13 per cent increase for AWAs over enterprise agreements.
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