Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I am asked this question by the member for Lyons, and I thank him for the question because he, like all of those on this side of the House, came into this parliament determined to defeat Work Choices. And we did that when we became a government and introduced Fair Work Australia. It was the Prime Minister today—the then Deputy Prime Minister—who led that charge and introduced Fair Work Australia. What that has done is to restore fairness to the workplace.

It has restored fairness because it has restored the right to collective bargaining—a universally recognised right that was denied under Work Choices. It has also restored the requirement to bargain in good faith. That is also something that was denied under Work Choices.

I am asked, also, what rights are affected when individual contracts were brought in. I remind the House of two pertinent examples. One was the Corowa meatworks, where they sacked all of their workforce and put a new workforce on individual contracts and did not pay any redundancy to the sacked workers. Then there was Spotlight, where the workers were taken off enterprise bargains, put onto individual contracts and had all of the penalty rates stripped away. They were two examples that happened under their watch that could never have happened under previous legalisation.

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