Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her questions. There were a number of detailed questions there. In relation to the first tranche of advertising, I cannot confirm that the exact figure was $4.1 million. I am happy to provide her with whatever the exact figure was for the media buy over that period, but I do not have those details in front of me. What I can say is that what I said in parliament was absolutely right—that the allocation of funding for the first tranche was coming out of existing funds that were noted in the MYEFO, which was tabled in parliament, from memory, in February. What I said in parliament was absolutely right.

In relation to the second tranche, $36.5 million is a figure I have never seen before. I am not familiar with that. I think it is a creation of someone’s vivid imagination. I note that a number of journalists, particularly at the ABC, speculated that the first tranche would be $50 million or $60 million. On Radio National one morning a broadcaster speculated that. How wrong they were. It was 10 per cent or less of that. That just goes to show that there is a very large amount of fanciful speculation around at the moment.

In relation to any further advertising, as I have said before, we reserve the right to respond to misinformation that is put out by various parties. We have an obligation to properly inform individuals of their entitlements at work. We make no apology for that. It is vitally important that people are fully aware of their rights at work, as they stand under the law and not as a creation of the fanciful imagination of someone in an advertising firm who is serving the interests of a client. We will undertake further advertising because we have an obligation to properly inform Australians of where they can go to get information about workplace laws—the information about appropriate levels of pay and remuneration or classification. I think people would like to know what classification they are entitled to. I only hope there were some businesses that had access to the Workplace Infoline or took advantage of the Workplace Infoline in relation to pay classification, even when it came to signing individual contracts. In one more celebrated case that has had some public recognition, the individual contracts were based on awards, which the Labor Party thinks were okay—a 45c an hour trade-off for all penalty rates. Any rate, that is for the Labor Party.

From our perspective, we think it is appropriate that employers and employees have a one-stop phone number that they can go to. The traffic to that phone number has dropped quite substantially since the advertising campaign was terminated. The advertising campaign led to a very significant increase in the number of phone calls—around 800 per day—and then there was a drop after the advertising stopped. Indeed, the number of hits on the website also dropped dramatically. The number increased dramatically with the advertising and has tapered off since the advertising stopped, which is evidence that the advertising did work. It did properly inform individuals and corporations of their obligations. It was a one-stop shop that people wanted to go to. It is also the case that with the new agencies—the Office of Workplace Services being replaced by the Workplace Ombudsman, and the Office of the Employment Advocate being replaced by the Workplace Authority—there is an obligation— (Time expired)

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