Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I was waiting for page 2, but page 2 did not come. For a former minister of the Howard government who claimed to care so much about literacy, it would be really useful if the Deputy Leader of the Opposition read Labor’s policy. If she is in any doubt about how to find it, it is on the internet. We campaigned on it for all of 2007. I will send it to her. The policy contains the answer, and I will give it to you now. The policy is Forward with Fairness. You should read it. And if you did read it, you would know that we do not have a preferred industrial instrument in Forward with Fairness; we talk about creating a fair and balanced system in which people have choice. People have choice, if they want to, to negotiate a collective agreement. They can do that with or without the assistance of a trade union. That is a matter for them, because that is a basic freedom of association matter. Alternatively, they can choose to not collectively bargain; they can choose to have individual agreements. The important thing about those individual agreements is that they stand on top of the safety net. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition and her party today voted for a continuation of Work Choices—

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