Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support this bill for the third time. The reasons we are here for a third time can be boiled down to about four reasons. First and foremost, the opposition—and they are indeed opposing—are hell-bent on stopping us from fulfilling an election commitment from 2007 and an election commitment reinstated again in 2010. As far as I know, we are the government, and we were in 2007, so we have the mandate to have this legislation passed. I think that has been pretty well established. But the opposition, being an opposition for opposition’s sake, have been making up all these scary old so-called clauses that are supposed to be in this bill—all probably written out by the member for Indi, who has a pathological hatred of unionism, particularly student unionism. They get their template answers, pop in here and slip out a few examples from their electorates, like the member for Flynn. You are going to have to do a bit better than that—do your own research, for a start.

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