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

I thank the member for Fisher for his question. It is true that there are misleading and deceptive claims that are being made, in particular by the union movement and by the Leader of the Opposition.

To give you another example of this misleading and deceptive campaign, in January this year the Leader of the Opposition established a task force to seek out the so-called adverse impact of the Work Choices legislation, even before it came into operation on 27 March. That task force reported back to the Leader of the Opposition in June of this year and so-called evidence from this report was then used to ask a question of the Prime Minister in this place in June by the member for Gorton. The basis of the question put to the Prime Minister was that this was evidence from an ordinary Australian worker. In the list of witnesses in the report this so-called ordinary Australian worker is listed as a local sporting coach, and elsewhere in the report it is said that he is an electrical worker.

With some investigation, it turns out that the facts are somewhat different to what the member for Gorton put to the Prime Minister on that day. In fact, this so-called ordinary Australian worker turns out to be an official of the Electrical Trades Union. If you go to the website of the Electrical Trades Union, not only is this official listed but there is a colour photograph of him. But this of course, according to the member for Gorton and the task force, is an ordinary Australian worker. I table that website from the Electrical Trades Union. This is just one of a series of similar descriptions that are made in this bogus report from the Labor Party’s task force, where they have union officials—

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