Well thank you very much Peter, my ministerial and parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentleman. As you know this is not the first occasion that I have addressed this annual gathering of ACCI. I would like to thank the association for its constructive interface with the Government over the last year, for the spread of its representation of business throughout Australia and its very keen commitment to the cause of economic reform and economic change to the benefit of all Australians. Although this country faces a number of economic challenges, not least of course the impact on the Australian consumer of high fuel prices, it is fair to say that we continue to enjoy very strong economic conditions.
We've had 15 years of continuous economic growth and the growth in GDP per head over that period of time shows us that we've done better than the United States and the OECD particularly over the past decade. We've seen 1.7 million new jobs generated in the last 10 years. The labour force participation rate is the most buoyant since those statistics were collected. The unemployment rate is down to near a 30-year low and the disposable incomes of Australian households have on average increased by 21 per cent over the last 10 years. And it's important to note in relation to household incomes that significantly the greater increases have been in the low and middle income areas of the Australian community. And although it is true that the, to use the colloquialism, the rich have got richer, it is not true to say that at the same time the poor have got poorer. In fact, though the deliberate social welfare policies of this Government, the Family Tax Benefits system, the maintenance of the social welfare infrastructure of Australia has meant that the lower income sections of the Australian community have proportionately gained more in a number of areas and according to a number of measures.
Now our preoccupation, of course, over the past few weeks has been on the cause, has been in the cause of workplace relations reform. And I want tonight to put those reforms into a proper context. The debate runs the danger of descending into an argument about detail and minutiae rather than a debate about the overall impact of changes of this kind.
We are strongly committed to these reforms because we believe that they will maintain the momentum of greater productivity in the Australian economy. Productivity is the holy grail of economic performance. It's productivity improvements which can deliver together the twin outcomes of real wage gains and low unemployment. It's very easy to have real wage gains for a large section of the Australian community if you are willing to pay the price of higher unemployment. It's much harder to have real wage gains for the community and at the same time maintain low levels of unemployment. And one of the things that this country has been able to do over the last decade has been to achieve the twin outcomes of high real wage achievements and also very low levels of unemployment. But to a very large extent what we have achieved in recent years has been the fruit of earlier economic reform. And a number of you in the past have probably been... used, or heard me use the metaphor of somebody participating in a foot race towards an ever receding finishing line to describe the character of economic reform. You never quite get there and never ever get there but if you don't keep running towards that ever receding finishing line all the other participants in the race are going to go past you.
When I was Pakistan recently I was provided with another useful metaphor by the Prime Minister of Pakistan to describe the challenge of economic reform. And he simply made the very pithy comment that if you stop walking on a treadmill you fall over. It was a reasonable description of what happens to a country if it stops the process of economic reform. We believe that these workplace relations reforms will deliver higher productivity. They will maintain the momentum of economic change and economic reform. They are reforms to which your association has constructively contributed. They're reforms that have been badly misrepresented but it is in the nature of major economic reform that in the initial stages of those reforms, it being easier to make the negative case rather than the positive case, a certain level of community unease and community disquiet is a consequence.
I believe that when these reforms are implemented and I'm very pleased to inform this gathering that a short while ago at a meeting of the joint government parties, approval was given to a number of amendments that will be introduced in the committee stages of the legislation in the Senate. They are amendments, which in part have been canvassed in the media in some respects, but I can inform you that they do not in anyway alter the fundamentals of the legislation. And those fundamentals of the legislation which are the creation of a single national workplace relations system, the changes in relation to the unfair dismissal laws, the changes that will place a greater emphasis on bargaining at the workplace through the simplification of the process of making workplace agreements, and the establishment of the Fair Pay Commission, that none of those fundamentals of the bill have in any way been altered by the amendments that will be proposed by the Government.
They, in the language that I've used on a number of occasions, they will better express the goals of the Government in a number of areas and remove ambiguities that inevitably occur in the preparation of a bill of this magnitude and this size. And when as I hope the legislation is passed by the Parliament before we rise next week for the Christmas recess, we will then see its implementation over a period of months and I confidently predict that in a years time people will look back on many of the misrepresentations of recent weeks and recent months, realising that the sky has not fallen in and the world has not come to an end and not every employer in Australia is a cruel, avaricious person, they'll look back and realise that so much of the misrepresentation of the legislation has been what it is in reality a quite outrageous distortion of what the Government is attempting to do.
But in saying that, I don't make any apology for the fact, and I see it as a virtue, that this legislation does bring about significant change. The change, whilst big, is fair. The changes are designed to maintain the economic growth and economic reform momentum of the last 15 to 20 years in Australia. The reform process is never finished. When countries imagine that the reform process has been completed, when governments do, then that is the time for electorates to well and truly question whether those governments continue to enjoy the support that they'd previously had.
We don't really have an alternative as a nation in an age of globalisation. We either succeed or we fall behind. We don't have the luxury of marking time. We must choose either to go forward or to go back. And one of the more ludicrous propositions that has been put around about the workplace relations reforms is that they are designed in some way to reduce the wages of Australians to the wage levels of people in China and other parts of Asia.
And I thought the ACCI's own paper released earlier this week entitled 'The Economic Case for Workplace Relations Reform', put it very well when it had this to say about that absurd proposition, and I quote, "The assertion that Australia is trying to compete with Asia particularly China by lowering wages is ridiculous. We cannot and should not try and compete with Asia on wages, instead we can and should compete by having higher productivity," end of quote. And that precisely is what this legislation is all about.
It is not about creating a low wage Australia, what Prime Minister in his right mind would want to do that? What government in its right mind after overseeing in nine- and-a-half years, a 15 per cent real increase in the wages of Australians, what Prime Minister or government in right mind would want to create a low-wage Australia, but what we do want to create is an Australia built in the years ahead on higher productivity because given the character of the economy in which we live, the world in which we live, that is the only path forward. And people ask for evidence of whether our workplace relations reforms will deliver the outcomes claimed of them, I think the best evidence is to look around the world at the relative performance of those countries that have allowed their labour markets to ossify, look at France, look at Germany, look at Spain, compare their unemployment levels and the economic challenges those countries face with the employment rather, levels, of countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and indeed Australia.
Last week in Malta at the CHOGM meeting I saw amongst other Prime Ministers, the current Labor Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and he of course is a very instructive person on this whole issue, he inherited the workplace relations reforms of the Thatcher period and he resolved when he became Prime Minister not to change those reforms because he knew they were essential to Britain's long-term economic position. And those of us, and there are many in Australia who retain a considerable affection for that country will recall the dismal decline of the British economy in the 1970s, will remember the winter of discontent in the late 1970s when labour relations reached an absolute nadir in the United Kingdom and the reforms carried out by the Thatcher Government brought about an enormous change in that country and to his credit, Mr Blair when he became Prime Minister, said that he was going to keep the changes. He made a famous speech to the Trade Union Congress when he said, and I've often quoted this in Parliament and forgive, I say to those who've heard it before, forgive me for the repetition but it is a very good quote and that is why I repeat it. He said, 'fairness in the workplace starts with the chance of a job', and I think it's a very telling comment to those who seek to criticise aspects of our legislation and who believe that salvation is to be found in a more regulated labour market. I believe that these changes will give us a new burst of productivity, they will lead to still lower unemployment, and they are changes that so far from denting the high living standards of Australians, will lead to further rises in those living standards over the years ahead.
Can I conclude an address to an organisation that believes [inaudible] in the principles of competitive and democratic capitalism, but I don't think we as people who believe in democratic competitive capitalism, should ever apologise for that belief that we should never be cowered by those who want to vilify the capitalist and entrepreneurial spirit and seek to tarnish the importance of risk-taking for profit in our society with talk of exploitation. I am reminded of that very great American book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by an American theologian Michael Novak where I think he laid out with brilliant clarity, the moral case for democratic capitalism over any alternative that mankind has ever devised. He pointed out in his book that the great moral virtue of democratic capitalism is that it alone is the system geared to outcomes and results. It is one of the great twists of humanity's progress that the capitalist system, which has made the least claims about individual motives of virtue, has delivered over centuries, the greatest results for human welfare. And it's done that by unleashing the creative energies of people through the spirit of liberty, development, self improvement, risk, experiment and adventure and it's that spirit which we believe brings about the greatest benefits for society and those that are deliberately setting out in the debate on workplace relations to smear and to taint the spirit of risk-taking in business that leads directly to jobs and wealth creation need to be challenged and challenged head on and held to account for their erroneous views.
Ladies and gentleman can I conclude my remarks tonight in thanking the organisation for its tremendous contribution to economic debate over many years, can I take the opportunity of extending my very warm personal thanks to Kevin Andrews, my Minister for Workplace Relations who has laboured with great skill and great diligence, in relation to some very, very complex legislation. I do not run a one-man band as a government and one of the great advantages I have as Prime Minister is that I am supported by a large number of extremely able Ministers and in respect of workplace relations, I am profoundly indebted to Kevin's commitment and Kevin's dedication and stewardship of this legislation. It's not been easy and we still have to see it finally pass through the Upper House but I am hopeful, being a cautious bloke, I don't put it any more strongly than that. But I remain hopeful, I remain positive, and if we do ultimately achieve that outcome so much of the credit will be due to Kevin, but ladies and gentleman, thank you very much for having me along. I wish the ACCI well over the next 12 months, there's much reform ahead, once the workplace relations legislation has been passed and bedded down, there are further reforms and no doubt ACCI will forcefully remind me in detail at what those are in the months ahead.
Thank you.
[ends]