Page 3425 - Week 11 - Thursday, 15 November 2007
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a bit on this, and I will come to that later. It is interesting to see what Mr Rudd and several of his colleagues have been saying in relation to it. It is a case of “watch this space”. But quite clearly there was an appalling amount of youth unemployment then—and unemployment generally. Unemployment has not been at the low levels we have now since the 1960s.
Mr Barr: Since the Whitlam government.
MR STEFANIAK: No. Even in the Whitlam government there were boosts. I am glad you interjected there, Mr Barr. I was at university then and I remember big problems sometimes. In, I think, 1993 there was a bit of a shock about it being very hard to get jobs. I managed to get one for the holidays at uni; I needed one. We had a few scares there. Even in 1971 and 1972 there was a bit of a scare. I am going back to the 1960s, when you would simply walk out and get any job you liked. That went by the board in the 1980s and early 1990s. There were some significant, huge problems there which we are simply not seeing now.
My other point is this: I wonder what Labor will do. Peter Garrett is fairly new to politics, and probably fairly open and honest. He has let the cat out of the bag a bit. He has said, “Look, these are agreed; we are going through an election. We will do something different in government.” We will have core promises, half-core promises—non-promises, perhaps, to use another quote in relation to our current Prime Minister from about 10 years ago.
Mr Garrett has hit the nail on the head. Even Mr Rudd, who has basically adopted most of the policies of the current administration, in a brilliant exhibition of “me-too-ism”, is stating that these things will not be wound back—they will not be wound back for five years. At the end of the day, if Mr Rudd happens to get in and sees how effectively the economy is working, I wonder whether we are going to see a further backtrack there. That five years might get extended to 10. You lot might be barking up the wrong tree in terms of this piece of commonwealth industrial relations legislation.
In a debate yesterday or the day before, we heard some figures stating that the average household income in the territory is about $200 a week more than in other parts of Australia. We are doing very well in terms of full employment and in terms of the local national economy booming—through some very effective policies of the federal government which have been implemented over a sustained period of 11 years.
I do not think the working families in Western Australia would agree with this. In that state there seems to be great angst about Labor possibly winding back the workplace agreements there. I note that those agreements have benefited that state particularly well. Indeed, nationally there was the creation of an extra 430,000 jobs that we did not have beforehand.
If you gave a working family a choice of a workplace agreement or a much more restricted agreement—in a situation where there was some real doubt as to whether the jobs would be created and whether the jobs would be there for their kids or they would be restricted by some draconian union award that did not give much flexibility to them—I think I know what they would pick. You lot always go on the negatives,
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