Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill 2007 I begin by responding to some of the comments made by the honourable member for Moreton. Clearly, he is so out of touch with what is going on in the current industrial relations scene. He is so out of touch that it sounded as though he was giving a speech in the fifties, never mind the seventies, eighties and nineties. I think all of the assertions he made with respect to Labor’s policy are entirely and utterly wrong. But the debate we are having on this bill today is no ordinary debate. This bill and the Work Choices laws it seeks to marginally amend are about what sort of country Australia is and what sort of country Australians want it to be—whether we want to live to work or work to live.

We know the Prime Minister has always held a radical view on industrial relations but only in this term—his 14th parliamentary term, his 34th year in parliament—has he had the political opportunity to impose his plan on Australian families. Knowing what we know about the Prime Minister and about his radical IR views, how can this amendment to Work Choices be seen as anything other than ensuring protection for only one job in this country—his own?

Labor clearly wants an IR system that is productive but fair. Labor—not the coalition, despite the rantings by the member opposite—commenced the move from central wage fixation to enterprise bargaining, but we did so without throwing fairness out of the back door. Why is this bill not a sufficient remedy for what ails Work Choices? Work Choices is fundamentally flawed. It is unfair and unnecessary. It is complex, and it is not a system for a modern economy. Let’s remember: the government spent $55 million of taxpayers’ money to try to sell Work Choices to Australians, telling them that their employment conditions were protected by law. If those very expensive commercials on television were telling the truth, I would not be standing here at the dispatch box this morning debating this tokenistic bill. And it is a token. It may well help some employees in this country. There may be some marginal improvement for some employees in some workplaces in this country, but it will not fix what is wrong with Work Choices. It will not be fixed by sacking one minister—a minister who this morning moved to guillotine debate on this bill—and replacing him with another. Hockey might be the jockey, but it is still the same old horse, and what a nag it is. If it had entered the Melbourne Cup last year—

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