Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister and follows the question he has just answered on what is fair and what is a decent thing in the workplace. I refer the Prime Minister to the fact that employees at Boeing’s Williamtown military aerospace support division were forced into a debilitating strike for more than 260 days in 2005 because of Boeing’s refusal to negotiate a collective agreement. Isn’t it the case that the vast majority of those employees wanted to collectively bargain with Boeing? Isn’t it also the case that neither the New South Wales nor the Australian industrial relations commissions, when the matter came before them, had a capacity to require Boeing to deal collectively with its employees? Doesn’t that mean the only choice here was the employer’s? Why can’t a majority of the employees and the independent umpire have a say as well?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The people who chose in the Boeing case—and I met some of these men—to go on strike were the men themselves. They could have returned without any kind of penalty. I am also reminded by the minister for workplace relations that, ironically enough, in this particular case two-thirds of the employees did not want the collective agreement.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s wrong!

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the Opposition has asked his question!

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So apparently it is all right for the majority to rule, if the majority rules the right way—and that is the Combet-Beazley way. But if the majority goes in the other direction it is: ‘Oh, this is dreadful. We’re being forced into a debilitating industrial dispute.’ What you want in the workplace is freedom of choice. You want freedom of the individual. That is what has made this country great and that is what will maintain its prosperity.