E&OE...
Thank you very much Senator Ellison, Senator Mathias Cormann, a newly chosen Senator from Western Australia, Senator Alan Eggleston, my other parliamentary colleagues and most particularly, your outstanding, energetic and highly performing local member Michael Keenan. Michael was one of the new boys of 2004 and in the short time he's been in the Parliament he's demonstrated to be a person who can make a great contribution to our parliamentary party meetings, but even more importantly, he's become a very thoughtful and sincere and dedicated local representative.
This morning I don't want to spend a lot of time addressing you, I am going to do something that I think is very valuable at large community gatherings such as this, and that is after having said a couple of words I am going to come down on the floor and answer any questions that people want to put to me because I do think that politics could do with a re-injection of a little more direct interaction between Members of Parliament and those who pass judgements on them.
Now I get the impression there will be a few people in the audience who are broadly supportive of the policies of the Government, but I don't take for granted that everybody agrees with everything that we've done. And one of the things that I do bring to the weeks and months that lie ahead as the Australian people decide whether they're going to return the Government or risk the Labor Party, one of the things that I do have very much in my mind is that I bring no sense of entitlement or no sense of right to the position I hold. It's an incredible privilege to be the Prime Minister of this country and every day I wake up thinking to myself what extraordinary good fortune and what a great privilege it is for me to have the opportunity. And at the end of the day, we are all at the service of the Australian people and they will make their judgement, and whatever judgement they make will be the right judgement because the Australian people have a great capacity to get things right.
I am conscious, of course, of the particular significance of this election here in Western Australia. Western Australia is growing faster than any other part of Australia and one of the reasons why it's growing faster than any other part of Australia is the mining boom. And one of the principal reasons that we are enjoying such a large benefit from the mining boom is that we have changed the industrial relations structure of this country. The present industrial relations system is properly crafted for the mining boom. It supports it, it facilitates it, it encourages it, it has expanded it. And if we turn our back on that industrial relations system as Mr Rudd has promised he will do, that will do damage to the mining boom, it will damage Western Australia and it will damage the entire nation.
One in four Western Australians are employed under AWAs. One in four. Twenty five per cent. That is way above the national average. And most of those people are earning many tens, in some cases hundreds of dollars more a week than they would be earning on a common law contract or under the award system, yet the Labor Party is determined to destroy the AWA system. Let there be no bones about...any doubt about it. They are determined, despite all the requests of the mining industry. Even the arguments of their Labor Premier in Western Australian Alan Carpenter have been ignored and there is a reason why and the reason is that AWAs don't include unions.
Now we have no arguments with unions bargaining on behalf of their members. We have no argument with employers and unions reaching collective agreements. We do not argue against union membership. We legally guarantee the right of every man and woman in this country to join a union if that is their wish. That is not the argument. The argument here is whether people in this state and around Australia will have the right if they choose to bargain directly with their employers to their benefit and advantage and financial reward. That's what's involved. And the removal of AWAs which is at the heart of the Labor Party's industrial relations policy will do enormous damage to the economy of Australia and enormous damage to the economy of Western Australia and inflict great injury on the tens of thousands of Western Australians who are employed under AWAs.
This issue alone is crucial to the judgement that is made by the people of this state when the next election comes. And Michael Keenan as the Liberal Party's standard bearer in this state and all the other members in this state, both the sitting members and the aspiring candidates, will be arguing for the long term future of Western Australians when they argue to defend the current industrial relations system. Because without that the mining boom will not be maintained to its full force and we will not be able to realise the full potential of what providence and good hard work has given us. We used to be a country many years ago that the rest of the world was a little suspicious about because of our industrial disputes and our bad work practices. Now they are all things of the past. We are now regarded as reliable suppliers. And I remember at the closing stages of the negotiations several years ago for the natural gas contract in the Guangdong Province from the North West Shelf; I remember the Chinese officials and leaders saying to me that what they'd liked about dealing with Australia was that we were reliable and dependable and predictable, that what we said we would do we did and we did it on time and we did it without any additional cost.
Now that is our reputation in 2007 and it's a reputation that has been hard won and it's a reputation we must fight to preserve. And you can't take it for granted and you shouldn't be beguiled by smooth words that everything will be the same. Everything will not be the same if there is a change in the area of industrial relations. The world will change very dramatically in that area because union domination will come back and individual contract making will be outlawed. And that essentially is what is involved and that is why there is so much at stake.
But my friends, there are many other things I know that are on your minds. In asking the Australian people to give us another go, whenever the election may be towards the end of this year, we're not arguing that we've been a perfect government, we're not arguing we're a government without criticism, but we are arguing that we're a government that has seen Australia's unemployment level go to a 33 year low. We've led a country now that is widely and warmly regarded around the world as a stable and predictable bastion of democracy and free enterprise and that is a reputation and that is an attitude that I will fight very, very hard to preserve because it's something that is very important to all of the Australian people.
Can I just say again how much I appreciate the tremendous work that Michael has done as your member. He works hard, he fights hard, he argues hard and he achieves a lot for your electorate and I do hope that come the end of the year, whenever that may generically be determined electorally-wise, that you not only remember him in your prayers, but you also remember him at the ballot box because I think he'll take both the prayers and the votes all at the one time. Thank you.
[ends]