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

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I will do that. The reason the general manager of Fair Work Australia is in a position to say there has been no interference is that contacts between the government and Fair Work Australia have been about fact finding, as is now on the public record for all to see in Senate estimates. The opposition, in its completely logically inconsistent other line of attack, has invited me to ring up Fair Work Australia and direct them to do something. That is wrong. Every day the opposition says that it should be done they are out there saying something that would be wrong in our democracy—the wrong thing to do, the result of shoddy thinking by and the shoddy standards of people who are obviously used to standing over others and bullying them to get their way. This government is behaving entirely properly in relation to this matter. I refer the parliament to the statement of the general manager of Fair Work Australia today, and I say to the member opposite: what pathetic muckraking this is.

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