Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

If there was a gold medal in the recent Commonwealth Games for overblown rhetoric then the Leader of the Opposition would have won by a mile. All we hear from the Leader of the Opposition is bluster on this issue, as on every other issue that he brings before this parliament.

It is interesting that for the last three months we have heard nothing from the Leader of the Opposition about industrial relations. In fact, in something like 100 questions in question time, up until yesterday, we had not one question on industrial relations from the Leader of the Opposition. But, on Sunday morning, the Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Combet, who represents the bosses of the Labor Party, was on theInsiders program on ABC television, giving orders as to what the Labor Party in here should be doing. Mr Combet said, after complaining about the inactivity of the Labor Party around these sorts of issues:

... I want to see in coming weeks and months all the way up to the election ... everyone in the ... Labor Party concentrating on [this issue].

After 100 questions in this place with not one mention of industrial relations, yesterday we had a couple of questions, and then a couple more and then, finally, an MPI on this issue today. That is the reality of the Labor Party in this place. What we have seen in the last two days is a great contrast: what a modern, successful, labour leader represents, so far as policy is concerned, versus a labour leader who is simply a captive of the union bosses here in Australia. Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mr Blair, said, amongst other things:

... the defining division in countries ... is increasingly open or closed: open to the changing world or fearful, hunkered down, seeing the menace of it, not the possibility.

If one were to construct a set of words, a paragraph, which described the Labor Party in Australia, then they would be the words which were used by that modern, successful leader of a new labour party—a modern labour party, a progressive labour party—Mr Blair, yesterday. And, as many commentators in the media have set out today, that stands in stark contrast to the man who leads the Labor Party in Australia—a person who is not open to a changing world; a person and a party which are ‘fearful, hunkered down, seeing the menace of it, not the possibility’.

Why is that true? It is true because the rhetoric that we hear from the opposite side of this chamber this afternoon is exactly the same rhetoric that we heard 10 years ago when this government introduced the workplace relations legislation. We were told 10 years ago that the sky was going to fall in on Australia. We had the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Perth and the member for Fraser, Mr McMullan, basically saying that this would lead to a reduction in the standard of living of ordinary Australians. That is what they said 10 years ago: that the sky would fall in. But what has happened over the last 10 years is that we have seen historic levels of employment in this country. We have over 10 million Australians employed in this country today—the most Australians who have ever been employed.

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