Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

We have just witnessed one of the most addled and bombastic question times I have seen in a very long time from this government. It was an extraordinary set of performances from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, marked by complacency, hubris, pathological hatred of the opposition, dishonesty and deceit, massive defensiveness and a sense of entitlement across the frontbench that only they are possible, only they should be and that they need to answer for nothing.

In the course of it, as usual with this Prime Minister and his ministers, they erected a series of straw men, knocked them down and believed they had mounted a defence of their position. One of their favourite straw men was to suggest that when we debated the industrial relations legislation of last year, Labor Party speakers—me, in particular—got up and talked about the sky falling in, mass sackings and horrible things happening immediately. I remember very well the analogy I used for the operation of this act at that time, because it is the analogy I have used ever since—that is, the operation of this act in the industrial relations conditions of ordinary Australians would be like an infestation of termites, slowly crumbling away, and that has precisely been the experience.

Because this government is so deeply dishonest and so appallingly defensive, it is gradually shutting down points of criticism and analysis where embarrassment is likely to occur. We saw another example of it here today. We saw the Prime Minister mocking the member for Perth when the member for Perth stood up and gave a set of statistics from the OEA on their initial survey, last May, of the first set of AWAs under the new regime applying to AWAs, and the impact that those had on the rights and the awards of ordinary Australian workers. I am going to go through those statistics because this is now a very historical and important document. This is the last time we will see the truth. It is the last time the Australian people will have an understanding of this—at least for 12 months. When we get into office of course we will reveal all.

The OEA discovered then, from their sampling of the AWAs to that point, these things: 100 per cent of them excluded at least one protected award condition; 64 per cent of them removed leave loadings; 63 per cent removed penalty rates; 52 per cent removed shift work loadings; 41 did not contain gazetted public holidays; 31 per cent modified overtime loadings; 29 per cent modified rest breaks; 27 per cent modified public holiday payments; 22 per cent did not provide for a pay increase over the life of the agreement; and 16 per cent excluded all award conditions and replaced them with the government’s legislated minimum standards. That was the last time the Australian people had a window on the truth, because those AWAs, as we know, once signed by the businessman concerned and the person who receives them, become secret documents, not to be penetrated by anyone else on pain of a massive penalty and an offence. We saw then, for the last time, the truth of what the government’s legislation was producing for ordinary Australians.

When we went back at Senate estimates to see these figures updated—and remember there are many thousands of AWAs which have come into place since then—we found that these figures are no longer being collected. This is pure eastern European circa 1950s Stalinism—pure Stalinism; that’s all there is to it—in which information is simply shut down because the truth is inconvenient. The truth goes to the heart of the malevolence of this minister—inoffensive though he is, largely, as a human being—and the Prime Minister, deeply offensive though he is, when he was still of a mind to do things in other than a totally addled way.

We now have a circumstance where the government cannot be trusted with the basic living conditions of ordinary Australian families, and that is the subject of our MPI today. This government has massively breached trust. This government has turned against Middle Australia. On the industrial relations front, the government said nothing in the last election campaign about what it intended to do, but it has introduced a system that will enable it to slash wages, smash awards, scrap penalty rates, scrap overtime, scrap shift allowances and scrap redundancy pay. This minister has put in place an infestation—a cancer—in the industrial relations system, which will fatally undermine, over time, the conditions of ordinary Australian workers and therefore of ordinary Australian families, none of it announced during the last election campaign.

That, of course, is not the only piece of deceit that we are dealing with in this MPI. The second piece of deceit—which also goes to the heart of the living conditions of Middle Australian families and the effectiveness of their pay packets in supporting their aspirations in life—is that statement made by our political opponents that they would keep interest rates at historical lows. There have been three interest rate increases since then.

The problem with this government is that it simply does not comprehend the new interest rate reality. It simply does not understand that there is no such thing as a small mortgage anymore, so there is no such thing as a small interest rate rise. It needs to be understood, absolutely, that families of Middle Australia are paying more for their mortgages under John Howard than they ever were under any of his predecessors, and that includes Paul Keating. They are paying more for their mortgages.

The Prime Minister gets up here in this chamber and he thinks he has a defence in talking about 17 per cent versus eight per cent or whatever. The simple fact of the matter is this: the interest rates now being paid by Australians take a higher percentage of their income than was ever the case while Paul Keating was in office. The Prime Minister conveniently forgets one other piece of history, and that is that when he was last Treasurer interest rates rose to 22 per cent and had to be dealt with, in that particular instance, by small business.

The simple fact of the matter is that, as a result of these interest rate rises, families are having to close down their activities very quickly indeed. Interest rate rises will affect the family holiday at the beach. They will affect the kids’ sport. For those who are heavily mortgaged—and many have been encouraged to be heavily mortgaged by this government—this is going to be a lean Christmas.

The member for Wentworth has suggested what I have just had to say is overdramatisation. The members for Hughes and Herbert say the rise is unimportant to their constituents. We all know that the Treasurer has said that he will not be concerned because he thinks that any rate below 10 per cent is low. Young families in our capital cities find themselves these days burdened with payments on mortgages of upwards of $300,000 and they find also that household debt has ballooned to 150 per cent of household disposable income. What we are watching here is a picture of aspirational Australia trying to get on top of what they need to do now to pay for the school fees, trying to get on top of what they need to do now to pay for childcare fees, trying to get on top of what they need to do now to pay for health benefits and trying to get their families into a situation where they can have a decent roof over their heads that gives their family a capacity to grow.

The consequence of all of that is that they have borrowed to the eyeballs, and many of them may have made that calculation over the last five years. Many of them have made that calculation on the basis of what they have heard from the propaganda of the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister when they have said things like, ‘We will keep interest rates at historical lows,’ when they have said things like, ‘Keep re-electing us and you’ll be able to do these things,’ or when they have listened to the Liberal Party propagandists urging them to take up things like private health insurance and the opportunity to send their kids to private schools.

When they have listened to the Liberals and to John Howard, they have listened with belief. They have believed that John Howard would never turn against them, that John Howard had their interests in mind, and now they have discovered the ideological John Howard. Now they have discovered the Howard of the big end of town. Now they have discovered, after 10 years in office and a tonne of hubris on the part of this Prime Minister, what he really means to them, and what he really means to them is growing hardship.

The Prime Minister compounded all of this a week ago when he went into the radio station to send the clearest possible signal to the Reserve Bank. The Prime Minister does not do anything without calculation. He particularly does not go on at great length in an interview about interest rates unless he means a message to get out. What the Prime Minister said to the Reserve Bank was this: ‘Raise the rates. A stitch in time saves nine. Raise the rates. You have the Prime Minister’s clearance. Get out there and do it. We want the rate raised before Christmas’—in the hope, of course, that a rate rise will not be necessary next year. What was he worried about here? What he was worried about here was simply this.

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