Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. How did the government’s unfair dismissal laws get the balance right in providing greater job security for employees and flexibility for employers? Are there are any obstacles to providing this greater job security for employees?

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

I thank the member for Page for her question. She certainly would recall, as members on this side of the House do, that before the 2007 election the Labor Party did something that the Liberal Party would never have dreamt of doing—that is, we published a comprehensive workplace relations policy and sought a mandate for it. Of course, in 2004 the then Howard government went to the election and did not breathe a word of Work Choices to the Australian people—not one word—only to visit Work Choices on the Australian people after the election.

We took a different approach—an honest approach, a straightforward approach—with the Australian people, and we published our policies comprehensively. I refer most particularly to the policy implementation plan of Forward with Fairness published in August 2007, which sets out our comprehensive plan for unfair dismissal, including committing special arrangements for small businesses with fewer than 15 employees. In this document we got the balance right, the balance between making sure that good employees get protection at work and making sure employers, particularly small business employers, have a system that will work with them and for them.

What is amazing in moving through this debate is the many positions of the opposition. Of course, under Work Choices, they said to the Australian people: ‘It doesn’t matter if you are a good worker; it doesn’t matter if you are a great worker. If you work in a business with fewer than 100 employees then on any day your employer can terminate your employment and you will have no comeback.’ Ministers who are now sitting on the opposition front bench would come to this dispatch box every day and defend the rip-offs and rorts of Work Choices, including good workers being dismissed for no reason—every day.

When we were elected with our policy to create a system to deal with unfair dismissals, I was very intrigued to see that the Leader of the Opposition, when asked about it in December last year said this very clearly:

Labor took a proposal to change the unfair dismissal laws to the election and won. So we must respect that.

Those were the words of the Leader of the Opposition. Now what we know is that, in an act of short-term political opportunism about his own job, the Leader of the Opposition is now repudiating his own words from last December. The Leader of the Opposition is a man who cannot hold a political position across three or four months. He will say or do anything in order to curry favour with those who sit behind him.

Interestingly, this morning the game was made absolutely clear by my very old friend the member for O’Connor, who, at the doors this morning was asked by journalists—and, I can see, there is the member for O’Connor, back in town—whether voting against the Fair Work Bill would damage the Liberal Party’s credibility with voters, seeing that the Leader of the Opposition had said that Work Choices was dead. Faced with this proposition—his leader had said Work Choices was dead but he obviously wanted to vote against the Fair Work Bill—what did the member for O’Connor say? He said:

I think we’ve got to realise that the party went through a period when decisions were being taken outside of the party room.

Last week in this chamber I joked that the member for O’Connor would get his turn as Leader of the Opposition. Well, we do not need to wait for it, because the member for O’Connor is already calling the shots from the back bench, causing the Leader of the Opposition to backflip from his December position in the interests of short-term political opportunism and his own job.

As fond as I am of the member for O’Connor, I actually think the true motivating force—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

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

He may have got that right, actually. But as fond as I want to be of the member for O’Connor, I think the true motivating force behind this change in position is not actually the member for O’Connor; it is the member for Higgins. And what do we know about the member for Higgins’s position on unfair dismissals?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There is an obvious point of relevance here. The minister is now trying to suppose what other people have in their minds. She is not that clever. She likes to be the class—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Sturt will resume his seat. The question referred to obstacles. The Deputy Prime Minister has the call. If the Manager of Opposition Business wants that sort of protection he would have not interjected 10 times in the first two minutes of the answer. Ten interjections in the first two minutes of this answer and then I get, not by a point of order but by an interjection to me, something that indicated that the Manager of Opposition Business was wanting, to use my expression, arc up. I think he has arced up enough and he should be a little bit careful when he says things like that.

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

The member for Higgins in late 2005 outlined his views on unfair dismissals where in respect of the exemption under Work Choices, the 100 limit, he said:

I can’t tell you there is any magic in the number 100.

He went on—‘If this were to work well and people were to say:

... in the years to come it should be extended to all companies … I would be very open to the idea.

There we have it. The real political position of the Liberal Party, which will ultimately be imposed on the Leader of the Opposition on the question of unfair dismissals, is very clear. In the middle of a global recession, the Liberal Party’s answer to that global recession is to make Australian workers easier to sack.