Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to talk, at this important time, about jobs and job security. With the global recession and the impact that it is having across this country in workplaces and households in each of our local areas, we know that jobs are certainly an issue in the front of everyone’s minds. The Rudd Labor government is doing everything it possibly can to deal with these issues. It started with our stimulus package back in October last year and continued with the initiatives delivered in December, which supported jobs throughout this country across the retail sector and across tourism by putting payments in the hands of disability pensioners, carers and families. We also funded 56,000 new training places in that first initiative. As a consequence of our Nation Building and Jobs Plan, we saw more initiatives to support jobs—whether it was through the provision of infrastructure in schools or through the installation of insulation in roofs. It was also through our employment service programs, in trying to ensure that apprentices were able to complete their apprenticeships because, despite any increase in unemployment, we still have a skills shortage in this country that needs to be addressed. And of course we have the Fair Work Bill, which is being debated right now in the Senate. What does the Fair Work Bill do? It provides job security. It ensures that people are paid a reasonable wage so that they can make ends meet, they can cover their cost of living and they cannot be sacked without legitimate reasons. Also, if a workplace has to downsize and has to have redundancies, it ensures that these workers have protections and redundancy packages.

We have heard a lot about jobs from the opposition over the past weeks and months, but realistically this is a party that still cannot let go of Work Choices. This is the party that brought Work Choices to our households and our workplaces. They still cannot bring themselves to let go of this horrific piece of legislation that they believe is their biggest legacy. This is a piece of legislation that they allege actually created jobs. But what this piece of legislation did was undermine basic wages and conditions. It allowed conditions, penalties and allowances to be ripped away from people. They may have had a job but they were also able to class themselves as the working poor because they were earning below the poverty line, thanks to that piece of legislation. Their idea of helping jobs was to allow employers in small to quite large businesses of up to 100 employees to just sack indiscriminately. That is what their legacy is and that is what Work Choices allowed for. It stripped away any right to have redundancy payments. If an employer did not want to give redundancies, they then just negotiated that away, and when we say ‘negotiated’ that means an employee would turn up to a job and have a document put in front of them and be told to take it or leave it. That is the opposition’s idea of job security.

What we have heard from the party room this week is that they still do not know what to do. There are those on the other side who say that Work Choices is dead, but many others on the other side will never accept that Work Choices is dead and, given the opportunity, would bring it back in a heartbeat. AWAs, the right to sack indiscriminately and no job security—that is what the Liberal Party believe in, that is what they have always believed in and that is what they will continue to believe in well into the future.

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