Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Boothby and the member for Moncrieff and their colleagues, in their role in the Howard government, put the safety net up for grabs, and people do not forget it. In addition, you brought in AWAs and, through that mechanism, people’s job security was undermined—their employment conditions were removed and their pay was cut.

Again, if you were concerned about people’s job security, you would immediately repudiate those policies. It is not enough to say that you do not believe in AWAs anymore; you should be saying that you believe in unfair dismissal protection. The members opposite should make clear their support for the protection of people’s job security by supporting the Rudd Labor government’s position on changes to the industrial relations system, which will deliver job security by protecting from unfair dismissal and eliminating individual contracts and AWAs, which undermine job security and take away working conditions.

There are other elements of the Work Choices legislation that members opposite should also reflect on. That legislation undermined the right of people to organise and to be represented by a union. Both of those things serve job security well in the Australian workforce and have done so for a long time. You also destroyed the role of the independent umpire in the industrial relations system. The independent umpire has assisted by mediating where any irresponsible party has unfairly attacked people’s job security over many decades—and you took that independent umpire away. And you sit there and possibly wonder about it; you react with mirth to criticism of the policies of the previous Howard government, which destroyed people’s job security. You cannot create jobs by destroying people’s job security.

The members opposite do not understand that responsible economic management and the protection of job security through a decent safety net are not incompatible. They are both compatible elements of a decent approach to the regulation of the labour market in this country. The members opposite failed on macroeconomic policy, on the protection of the safety net and in relation to the protection of people’s job security against unfair dismissal. You have failed on so many fronts that you have been rejected by the Australian community. Learn a lesson from it. Support the Rudd Labor government’s approach to protecting people’s job security.

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