Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, of course not. It's ridiculous. So what planet does this thinking come from? Someone who makes a sacrifice like giving up four years to study or who does an apprenticeship or puts their family home up as collateral and works 80 hours a week should have the same income and standard of living as someone who decides either not to work at all or to work a 38-hour week with no risk? Hello? Hello? We're back in never-never land. No. When I was on the minimum wage and I watched others who had success and I saw what they did, I was inspired and wanted to follow in their footsteps.

Of course the Labor Party with their core purpose to increase union membership will do all they can to ensure larger employers—which are easier to infiltrate—will put smaller local family owned and run businesses out of business by having industry-wide bargaining. Smaller employers who do not have HR departments like their bigger counterparts will simply have no say in future workplace industrial relations, which is reprehensible and is, again, part of the socialist agenda which wants to eliminate individuality and small-business aspirations in favour of big companies that they can control via union membership. This bill is nothing to do with workers. It's all to do with attempting to drive up union membership. I hand it to the Labor Party. They are experts in getting people to bind to their hidden agendas by having the appearance of caring, but, in reality, they truly are wolves in sheep's clothing. I believe the Australian people are smarter than the Labor Party give them credit for and will see this smoke and mirrors legislations for what it is and I hope the non-Labor senators will block it as well.

To further show how out of touch this Labor government is, in question time today the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations rattled off over 25 names of organisations and groups they consulted with on this bill. Do you know how many names of small businesses he stated? Zero—not one. He of course consulted with three large employers, Qantas, Woolworths and Toll—no union membership going on there—but the majority of consultations were with bodies that are supposed to be representatives of small businesses, not real, living, actual small-business owners. Yes, Tony, they really are out there if you want to go and actually meet them.

This bill is a disgrace. It has no balance and it puts more strain on already stressed small-business owners. It will cause more job losses and Australian workers will be worse off. If this Labor government understood business and the economy, they might actually get this.

(Quorum formed)

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