Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his repeated defence in this place of the Cowra Abattoir and its owner, who, under the government’s industrial relations legislation, lawfully sacked 30 employees and rehired some on inferior terms and conditions for so-called financial operational reasons. I also refer to the administrator’s report into the abattoir, showing that as at 30 June 2006, while the Office of Workplace Services was conducting its investigation into the operational reasons for the sackings, a total of $1.18 million had already been transferred from the abattoir to a related company of the owner. Why did the Prime Minister give the abattoir owner a clean bill of health when there was a highly questionable million-dollar transfer on the books of the company at the very time of the Office of Workplace Services investigation?

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

My position on this has not been to repeatedly defend the company. Rather, my position has been to repeatedly point out that the argument made by the Labor Party and the unions—that the retrenchment of these workers was due entirely to the operation of the new Work Choices legislation—was wrong. That is the argument. It may come as a blinding flash of light and new reality to the member for Perth for me to tell him that companies have lost money, gone broke and retrenched workers under every industrial relations system this nation has had since Federation. If in fact there has been something wrong in the behaviour of the company, I would invite the member for Perth—and anybody else who is interested—to take that matter up with the relevant body, which is ASIC.

My position is very simple. The argument advanced by the unions and the Labor Party all along in relation to this company has been ‘It’s all been due to Work Choices’. The evidence to date is that that claim is wrong. If the unions and the Labor Party have any evidence to the contrary, they should give it to ASIC. The reality to date is that what the Labor Party has been arguing is completely false.