Page 3969 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 October 2005
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this heartland of traditional industrial positions that are so eloquently espoused by my colleagues opposite.
It is interesting that Cardinal Pell’s name was used more often in the last two days than I have had Sunday lunches. I had the opportunity to meet his eminence only a couple of weeks ago in Canberra and I did hear him make some comments that were not particularly supportive of the industrial reforms that are being proposed. I was a little surprised—he does not speak with papal infallibility on these matters and is entitled to have his opinion—and found interesting what happened the next day at the Press Club, where he admitted that he had been very concerned in 1996. I have quoted a number of the friends of the Labor Party and their members who were also concerned in 1996. He realised and admitted that he got it wrong. What he is doing now is making prudential judgments—and he is entitled to those—but he has certainly had the integrity to admit that his forecast of gloom and doom made nearly a decade ago turned out to be without basis.
Members opposite seem to want to keep trotting out the same old rhetoric that we have heard every day this week. I must say that I do acknowledge something one of my colleagues opposite, Ms Porter, said: we are getting tired of it. We are getting tired of it because there is nothing new. We know the Labor Party is dead set against any change when it affects unions. They have to be protected; they are the power brokers in this territory; they call the tune on the preselections; they call the tune on the dollars. I understand you are captives. I am not a captive of anybody here. If I do not agree with the federal government I will say so. I will say on this one that I believe that the initiatives that they have in mind will eventually be proven to be correct and that we will benefit, as we have on so many other reforms.
We have gone through this before. We had tax reform and we were told that it was going to be ruination; there will be people starving in the street and gloom and doom in all directions. And what do we see? The economy is pumping along, unemployment is coming down and business is going well. People are coming to me and complaining, “We have got so much business we just cannot get enough people here. Nobody is looking for work.” That is what has prompted me to call for more immigration, because we are in fact going so well in this country. But we cannot afford to be complacent.
Members opposite seem almost blind and deaf to what is being proposed. I remind them that the federal government is not eliminating or outlawing any terms and conditions that currently exist within the federal system. Even matters that can no longer be in awards can continue to exist in agreements, including features such as penalty rates and long service leave.
I have to say about penalty rates that they are up there, along with motherhood, as a sacred institution. The fact is that the penalty rates situation has been enshrined over many years but is very largely anachronistic. In the industry I worked in for about 12 years, we had these penalty rates that kicked in from 7 o’clock at night. The reason they kicked in at 7 o’clock at night was that the pubs used to shut at 6 o’clock and people would have an hour to wash up and clean up and then go home. So, if you had to work after 7 o’clock, it was unreasonable.
What happens in 2005? Now, everybody goes out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. That is the normal time of doing business in hospitality; yet we sit there saying,
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