Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is also addressed to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of any recent business surveys on employment opportunities? Does the survey indicate that recent workplace changes have created more jobs? Is the Prime Minister aware of any policies that could harm this job creation?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In thanking the member for La Trobe for his question, I remind the House that in March 1996 unemployment in the federal division of La Trobe was 6.2 per cent. It is now a very pleasing 3.4 per cent. The member asks me about any further analysis of the job market in Australia. I can inform the House that in the last couple of days the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers released the inaugural edition of its new publication called the Private business barometer. It is an analysis into the health of private businesses that are defined as having a turnover of between $10 million and $100 million a year. It is a very useful addition to the volume of literature on the economic performance of small to medium sized businesses in this country.

The key findings of this document are very interesting and they are relevant to the question asked by the member for La Trobe. The first of the key findings is general in its application. It says that mid-sized private businesses overall reported strong growth over the past 12 months, with an 11.2 per cent average increase in profits and a 14.9 per cent average growth in sales. It goes on to say: ‘This is expected to surge over the coming 12 months, with a targeted average sales growth of 17.7 per cent fuelling a targeted average increase in profits of 16.6 per cent.’ It says that, while the three-year outlook is not quite as bullish, it remains solid, with a 14.4 per cent increase in sales expected to drive an 11.8 per cent rise in profit. It makes the very strong and obvious point that these businesses are optimistic, they are enjoying the economic conditions of the day and they remain very positive about the future. Very interestingly, the key findings also include the following:

About half (48.6 percent) of businesses responded positively when asked if the Federal Government’s industrial relations reforms would prompt them to hire additional workers ...

Let me repeat that: almost half said that the federal government’s industrial relations reforms would prompt them to hire additional workers. They went on to say that one of the problems was a shortage of qualified people—and I refer the member back to the answer I gave to the member for Hasluck when speaking about skills vouchers being one of the ways that we are addressing that issue.

This document adds to the volume of analysis and literature which says very strongly that our workplace relations reforms have lowered unemployment and boosted the enthusiasm of small to medium sized businesses to hire more workers, and any reversal of our industrial relations reforms would stop, stone dead, the progress towards lower unemployment in this country.

Any hope that the business community might have had that there would be some softening of the Labor Party’s industrial relations policy, some drawing back from the manic determination of the Labor Party if it wins government to bring back the unfair dismissal laws, was destroyed on the Lateline program last night when, on two or three occasions, with great gusto, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said that, if Labor won government, she was going to repeal the industrial relations changes of the coalition ‘lock, stock and barrel’. Notice how much more strident she is, notice that all the olive branches, all the willingness to have transitional arrangements for AWAs, all the indications that ‘we were going to talk to business, we were going to be a bit more warm and cuddly to the business community’ are gone. We know, and she has acknowledged it, that Labor’s policy, which is anti-business and anti jobs growth, would be particularly severe on small business. Labor’s policy is designed by the unions for the unions and not for the good of Australian business or for the Australian economy.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has already warned business to stay out of the public debate. She has threatened business with injury if it dares to criticise Labor’s policy. We have seen that punitive attitude at work in relation to Mr and Mrs Doolan, the proprietors of that motel in Goulburn. They are the sort of people who will suffer, and suffer very severely, from the policies of the Labor Party if they are implemented. Of course, Dean Mighell, from the Electrical Trades Union, said the thing that he liked about Labor’s industrial relations policy was how it was ‘going to be fun’, if Labor won, enforcing the new industrial relations policy against the interests of business around Australia.

I say in conclusion to the member for La Trobe that the latest evidence in this Private business barometer by PricewaterhouseCoopers is that almost 50 per cent of small to medium sized businesses in Australia see the government’s industrial relations policy—a policy that will be repealed lock, stock and barrel if Labor wins—as being very much an incentive to hire more people. That has got to be good news for the unemployed; it has got to be good news for small business; and equally it has got to be bad news for the unemployed and bad news for small business if Labor’s job-destroying policy is ever given a chance of being introduced.