Senator TROOD (Queensland) (3.19 p.m.)—I have sat through question time for the last two weeks and listened with great interest to the attacks that the opposition have made on the government’s proposals to reform industrial relations. Most of these attacks have been ill-conceived and seem to be directed at trying to undermine what are essentially very modest and reasonable proposals. As I have sat here listening to these attacks, I have noted that a very sad theme runs through them all. That very sad theme is the failure of the Labor Party to appreciate why these reforms are necessary. What is particularly sad about it is that the Labor Party used to be a party of reform. They used to understand the importance of reforming the Australian economy.

Perhaps I can remind the Senate of the extent to which that was the case. During the eighties and nineties, when Labor governments were in power, the efforts to reform the economy took on such dimensions as the floating of the dollar, the deregulation of the business and finance industries, the privatisation of Australian businesses—such as Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank and, of course, Telstra —tariff reduction, removing tariff barriers and protection, taxation reforms and even the introduction of quite far-reaching competition policy. I am delighted to say that the coalition for the most part strongly supported these reforms as being necessary and desirable.

What is sad about this is that the Labor Party seem to have forgotten why they did this. They seem to have forgotten why this process of reform was under way. Of course, there is a very simple explanation for why they did this. It is not complicated; it is not a mystery. They undertook this process of reform because they wanted to make the Australian economy more internationally competitive—and that is precisely what the motivation is for these reforms even now. The reality persists that, in a global environment, in the context of globalisation, economies have to be internationally competitive. These industrial relations reforms are part of the effort to make the Australian economy more competitive. Why would you do this? Why would you want to make the Australian economy more competitive? It is not a complicated matter either; nor is it a mystery. You do it because you want to improve national growth. You do it because you want to give people jobs and ensure that people do not lose their jobs. You do it because you want to encourage a good, sound investment climate for business.

Australia did that during the 1980s and 1990s. It did it well and we gained advantage from it. I have some examples from the international environment of countries which failed to reform and lost track of the need for undertaking continual economic reform—countries like Japan, which had a lost decade. Japan through most of the 1990s had negative growth or poor growth at best. Only now is it beginning to show some signs of change. There are better examples. Examples in Europe show a very stark contrast within the European Union between those countries which have fundamentally reformed their economies and those that have failed to do so. Countries like Germany and France have for years failed to undertake the necessary reforms of their economies. Those countries and their people are facing the consequences of that failure to reform as we sit here today.

The countries that have done well in Europe, that are succeeding and providing jobs for their people are those which have undertaken fundamental reforms—for example, Ireland and, of course, the United Kingdom. Germany is a very good example of what can happen when countries fail to undertake these kinds of reforms. Just recently the Siemens organisation—a very large employer—announced that it was laying off 2,400 jobs as a consequence of the slow and slumped state of the German economy. The German economy for at least two, three or four years has been in a situation essentially of negative growth. (Time expired)