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

in reply—In closing this second reading debate on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, it is not my intention to speak for a long period of time, but I make the following points very briefly. The Rudd Labor government has come here today proud to start the process of getting rid of Work Choices through the passage of this bill. I have been wondering for some weeks now what it means to not support and not oppose a piece of legislation. Apparently, what it means is that you hide in your office because you do not know what you want to stand for in the modern age. This is a government that knows what it stands for. It stands for a fair, balanced and flexible industrial relations system; and, more than anything else, it stands for the delivery of the things that it promised the Australian people.

Let us remind ourselves that the Liberal Party finds itself in the position it is in today because it was not honest with the Australian people. When the Australian people voted in 2004 they did not vote for their pay and conditions to be stripped away through individual workplace agreements, Australian workplace agreements, they did not vote to exchange the safety net for a limited number of so-called protected award conditions that could simply be eradicated without any compensation and with the flick of a pen, they did not put their hand up and vote for the opportunity to be dismissed at any time at all and for no reason and they did not vote for a system so complex and so confusing that it fails to meet the needs of business. Having not told the Australian people the truth in 2004, that is what the Liberal Party introduced in government. There is now an attempt to completely rewrite history about its knowledge of the impact of these changes on working families. It knew it was hurting Australian working families and it delighted in it. That is the truth and no rewriting of history will cover that up.

Let us remember that the Liberal Party’s own Work Choices propaganda talked about Billy, the minimum wage worker who lost every condition in his award. Howard government ministers, the members of the Liberal Party today, publicly defended that as fair. These are the same people who now profess a great concern about jobs in the Australian community who said that it was fine, if you were a long-term worker, the breadwinner in your family and you had always done the right thing by your employer, and it was okay if you went to work one day and were dismissed for no reason and you had no remedy. So much for a concern about jobs and the job security of working people. They delighted in the fact that people could lose pay and conditions. They delighted in the fact that people could be thrown out the door for no reason at all and with no remedy.

Since the election the Liberal Party have been trying to rewrite history and they have been struggling to try and find a way to a new position on workplace relations. And haven’t we seen a variety of positions on display? No-one can predict with certainty where they are going to go next. But what we do know is that they introduced Work Choices, then they defended Work Choices, then they defended the continuation of Australian workplace agreements, then they had a vexed party room meeting and then they did not know what they were going to do next. In that track record of dithering around the place it seems that the parliament today is going to be witness to another round of dithering because we are advised—and we do not know if we have been correctly advised—that the opposition will not move any amendments today, despite the fact that the opposition spokesperson on this commenced her speech in the second reading debate by saying:

The opposition will not seek to oppose the passage of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. However, we will move an amendment that we believe will strike the right balance between flexibility and fairness in workplace relations.

She then went on to outline an amendment which would have increased the time period for interim transition employment agreements—that is, she outlined an amendment which would have kept statutory individual employment agreements in the system for longer.

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