Time to be enlightened ausflying.
Remember the old adage, "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics". You appear to have seized upon data that has been gleefully bandied about by that bastion of impartiality, the Institute of Public Affairs, to push its ideological agenda. That being that 1.9 million Australians are self-employed, whilst only 1.8 million Australians are members of a union. However, these numbers in isolation do not tell the whole story.
The mathematical flaw in using the simple comparison of these two figures in order to bolster an argument, is that the numerical samples are not mutually exclusive, that is, a significant number of the self-employed also belong to unions (not personal opinion, ABS data). A large proportion of self-employed people are classed as such, by reason of the fact that they act as independent contractors, not necessarily through personal choice, but often by being presented with no alternative by unscrupulous employers seeking to minimise or eradicate their legal obligations to employees. When then comparing the number of people who belong to unions, as against the number of self-employed people who do not belong to unions, the resultant ratio is radically different.
There has been a large body of work undertaken by labour market economists into the effects of the introduction of AWAs, and associated legislation. Try this for starters to whet your appetite
www.econ.usyd.edu.au/download.php?id=4301. Overwhelmingly, empirical and projected outcomes with respect to the wages and conditions of most employees are negative. Freedom of information requests to access study papers the government commissioned when framing work choices have been refused as "not being in the public interest".
With regard to opinion polls, consider this quote from a recent speech on work choices, given to a small cheer squad of like-minded luvvies, by one of the luminaries of the political party that you seem to have such a blinkered adoration for, one senator Nick Minchin, "Poll after poll demonstrated that the Australian people don't agree at all with anything we're doing on this - we have minority support for what we're doing".