Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister at the dispatch box for proving my case for me. What she has just said to the businesses in this country is that if you do not hand out the propaganda sheet within three months, you can get dragged through the Federal Court and fined. Let us not hear any more nonsense from this government about being pro-business or pro-small business. This government are so desperate to get propaganda out to workers which will use the word ‘fairness’ and the word ‘test’ in a sentence that they are going to bully employers into handing out the sheet within three months, at pain of being dragged through the Federal Court and being fined. The minister at the dispatch box has talked about bullies. Let us be very clear about who the bullies are. The bullies in this situation are the Howard government bullying business to hand out their propaganda. We know this legislation was conceived in polling. We know it has been an excuse for an advertising campaign. Now it is an excuse for a propaganda fact sheet and employers will be bullied, dragged through the Federal Court and fined if they do not hand out the Howard government’s propaganda. There is no other way of reading this legislation. It is a disgrace. It is an attack on Australian business, and there is no other way of reading it.

Of course, this afternoon the government has engaged in a procedural manoeuvre so that Labor cannot vote against this amendment without voting against the other amendments. Labor supported the other amendments. Why did we support the other amendments? There was one from Senator Steve Fielding which, while it would not fix things like the Tristar case and the fact that under the Howard government’s laws you can have your redundancy entitlements stripped off you without a cent of compensation, seeks to protect redundancy entitlements after they have been terminated or on transmission of a business for 24 months instead of 12 months, and we are prepared to support that.

The other amendments are here because of the Howard government’s incompetence, because when it drew up this bill it was spending more time with the pollsters and the advertisers than it was with parliamentary counsel. Apart from sheer incompetence, what could explain a government bringing a bill into this parliament which needed to be amended in this House the day after it was introduced? Minister Hockey introduced it on a Monday and amended it on a Tuesday. Then it went to the Senate, and there were so many defects in it that the government had to move another tranche of amendments. What could explain that sheer incompetence? Why is it that this government is incapable of competently writing a piece of legislation? Clearly it is not. Why is it that within 24 hours of moving a bill it has been amended once, and here we are, after the Senate has voted, and it is being amended again? There are technical defects, including defects about awards, littered throughout it. It is laughably bad.

This is a government that beats its chest in question time about its industrial relations record. Let no-one be in any doubt about what the industrial relations record of this government is: incompetently drafted legislation and hitherto unknown levels of industrial relations bureaucracy. This government is going to spend $1.8 billion on bureaucracy over the forward estimates—complexity, regulation and red tape for employers, to which the government is adding today. Hand out a fact sheet, a propaganda sheet, or get dragged through the Federal Court. And then, of course, there is the gross unfairness to workers which we have seen time after time, as people have lost basic conditions and not got one cent of compensation.

Labor will not oppose these amendments, because of the way the government has bundled them together, but they will stand on the parliamentary record for all time as a testament to this government’s appetite for propaganda and its sheer incompetence in being able to legislate on industrial relations.

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