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

Their own internal document from the opposition’s highest decision-making body, the shadow cabinet, says that the proposed amendments are to ‘assist in defeating future policy proposals by State or Federal Labor’. So that is what it is all about. I referred to it in parliament last week, and that is their true motivation. With that true motivation revealed, what is being said in this debate I think can be viewed with some clarity. What this is about is pursuing a set of amendments which, if adopted, they think would so flaw this process that it would be derailed. What I am saying very clearly to the Liberal Party is that the government is committed to delivering on the intergovernmental agreement.

Much of this debate has proceeded as if it is something about decisions I have made independently of others and something that I have determined personally. Of course that is not the case. What happened here is that elected representatives from elected governments around the country sat around a table and worked out the best way forward. People compromised and exchanged views, and we got to the intergovernmental agreement that is before the parliament as the foundation stone for the bill before the parliament. So we are delivering on that intergovernmental agreement. We gave our word to use our best endeavours to do that. We will do that. I counsel the Liberal party against digging in and derailing the occupational health and safety process, because we will make that very clear at COAG and to the business community. With those words, I move:

That the question be now put.

Question put.

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