Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

It is more pie for all, more satisfied customers, less bullying of pie shop workers. Let us have that. Let us make that a policy. No bullying of pie shop workers under a government Tony Abbott leads. How does that sound? That will be a policy we will pursue with vigour. What we want is a scenario where the industrial relations laws trust the pie shop owner and the pie shop workers that they want to get on; open at the times their customers want them open; and work together to create more opportunity to make that business as prosperous as it can possibly be—putting aside angry complaints about cold pies.

That is the pursuit that this side of the House wants and it is the desire of the Australian public and the desire of the industrial relations system—an industrial relations system which returns itself to the sensible centre if there is a change of government in approximately 99 days and 18 hours. We think that what the government is doing here is rewarding its mates—it did this in the budget by giving them money to get back through donations in an election campaign. This is more law, and we acknowledge that there have been some amendments because the bill was so flawed when it came to the parliament that even that quasi-Labor member, the member for New England, stood against it. They have changed and accepted some amendments.

We think this is a bad direction, and we have said that for some time. Australia has a productivity problem and we have to improve our productivity performance. We have a competitiveness problem increasingly against our international competitors. We live in a globalised society and world. There are many who would like to whip up a scare campaign in the community about that. We have to compete. We have to be as lean and mean and hungry as we can to compete, especially small business.

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