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

I hear the member for Perth interjecting. It was a bit like him running around to the business community in Australia in the last year saying it would not be inappropriate to have AWAs. I take it from that that the member for Perth is advocating that we have a national system and is joining with what the government wants to do. He is not the only one who would see a national system as being valid. Mr Combet, the Secretary of the ACTU, said last March:

We are not necessarily in principle hostile to having a more cogent and clear national system of industrial relations. I think the economic efficiency argument is quite clear.

That is what we on this side of the chamber have been saying month after month. If we can remove this duplication and cost, it will be of great benefit in productivity to businesses in Australia and therefore indirectly to the workers of Australia as well. We know that the architect of the Leader of the Opposition’s backflip on AWAs, Mr Robertson, the Secretary of Unions NSW, is implacably opposed to a national system of industrial relations in Australia. The question out there is this: who is going to write part of the ALP’s policy on industrial relations? Is it going to be the member for Perth, who was rolled on the last part of their policy, or is it going to be Mr Robertson, the leader as I understand it of the ‘gang of mobsters’—the ‘mob of gangsters’—in Sydney? Is it going to be the shadow spokesman for industrial relations or is he going to get rolled once again by the union bosses?

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