Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

They are all feisty in pursuit of Work Choices again. Let me make it very clear what happened on Saturday afternoon and very directly answer the Deputy Leader of the Opposition's question. Given her noted advocacy of Work Choices, I will make sure I do answer it. On Saturday afternoon, the government was advised by Qantas that it had determined to ground the planes. The advice from Qantas was crystal clear that they had made the determination to do so. They were not consulting with the government; they were not asking the government to do anything. They were grounding the planes at five o'clock—no ifs, no buts, no maybes; they were grounding the planes. In the face of that declaration by Qantas that they were grounding the planes, the government acted. Maybe the Leader of the Opposition would have spent days and days and days in talks as people were stranded around the country. I preferred to act. I did act and, as a result, industrial action is at an end.

On the question of telephone calls to the industrial parties, I have today spoken to a number of the industrial parties and I have made it perfectly clear to them, including Alan Joyce—

Ms Julie Bishop interjecting—

and including Tony Sheldon—I thank the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—that my expectation and the expectation of the government, having successfully acted to end the industrial action and get Qantas planes back in the sky, is that the industrial parties now get around a table and get this dispute fixed. I say to those industrial parties, as I have said to them in those telephone calls and as I said not long before coming to question time at a media conference, I believe the obligation now rests equally on each of their shoulders to get around a table and get this dispute sorted. My predisposition when faced with the circumstances I saw on Saturday was to get it fixed and I have.

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