Strong economy should not be at cost of fairness

But to those employers who are concerned about employment and productivity, Labor says study the facts, not the Howard Government's wild claims.

Hockey likes to boast about the 276,000 jobs that have been created since WorkChoices was implemented. However, total employment growth for the year to March 2005, pre-WorkChoices, was 50,000 higher at 327,400.

Total employment growth for the year to March 1995, after the introduction of Labor's industrial relations reforms by the Keating Labor government was 328,000. Australia's productivity actually went backwards for the first six months following the commencement of WorkChoices and is presently at just 1.5 per cent compared to a historical average of 2.3 per cent.

In truth, productivity grew by 3.2per cent in the five years after Labor decentralised the labour market, and productivity grew by just 2.2per cent in the five years after AWAs were introduced by Howard.

Free-market labour economist Mark Wooden said during his appearance on the ABC's Four Corners in September 2005: "There's not a lot of evidence that individual contracts produce productivity ... the biggest gains for productivity still revolve around a system which is collective based."

The Howard Government has also suggested that the declining number of industrial disputes in Australia can be attributed to WorkChoices. Apart from being consistent with international trends, the fact remains industrial disputes fell by a greater proportion when Labor introduced enterprise-based bargaining in the early 1990s.

The Howard Government claims Australians on AWAs are always better off. However, statistical data and analysis of AWAs, both official and leaked, show very clearly these laws are ripping away basic conditions, such as penalty rates and overtime, from employees. Indeed, 44per cent of employees on AWAs lost all of the conditions the Prime Minister told them, in expensive taxpayer-funded advertising, would be protected by law.

As well as stopping the ripoff, Labor's policy introduces a new era of family-friendly working arrangements to give Australian parents the choice of having a parent at home with a new baby for the first two years of the baby's life.

While the Howard Government is steeped in the past, Labor's industrial relations policy is focused squarely on the future. Labor believes Australians do not have to choose between having a strong economy and fairness at work. Australians can have both, should have both and deserve both. That's moving Forward with Fairness.