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

I thank the member for Isaacs for his question. Of course, in the killing off of Work Choices and in the move to the Fair Work system there has been a need to ensure that Australian employers and employees got all of the information they needed as the system came into full operation on 1 January this year. That is why we have been in the business of getting that information to them in a practical and responsible way. The Fair Work website has had more than 1.4 million visits, 54,000 copies of the new Fair Work Ombudsman best practice guides have been downloaded, there have been 570,000 calls to the Fair Work information line and $3.7 million has been allocated to fund almost 50,000 education visits by the Fair Work Ombudsman—personal discussions to help businesses make the transition. Under the Fair Work Education and Information program, over 1,700 workshops have been delivered around the nation and there are a further 600 to come in the months ahead. The Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia has worked in partnership with Telstra—a very innovative partnership—to mail out Fair Work information to over 900,000 small businesses. There have been 60 seminars around the country conducted by the National Farmers Federation for farmers to make sure that they get the information they need. And of course unions are working on the education of employees to make sure working people get the information they need through the union education fund. This is real, on-the-ground education and training. It is a low-cost approach.

I am asked whether there have been alternative approaches. Well, there have been. There was the waste of $121 million of taxpayers’ money on Work Choices, with $212,000 of that money producing 200,000 of these mouse pads. The House has looked at these mouse pads before. Of course, when we came to office in February 2008 I was advised that there were 97,898 mouse pads still in storage out of the original 200,000. I think I am a pretty determined person and I work as hard as I can, and I have laboured hard to get rid of these mouse pads—I have laboured hard.

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