Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Social Inclusion. What impact do individual statutory agreements have in the workplace and what level of community support exists for them?

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

I thank the member for Cunningham for her question. I know that she is deeply committed to fairness and decency in Australian workplaces. I know that she saw, as many other members in this House saw, under the Liberal government’s Work Choices regime hardworking Australians getting basic pay and conditions and being ripped off without a cent of compensation. As the parliament draws to a close for a parliamentary fortnight, the overwhelming impression from this fortnight is that the Liberal Party is a political party stuck in the past and divided about its future—stuck in the 1960s, as we saw on display during question time. They are stuck in an era of climate change denial and divided about the future strategy for climate change. They are divided and unsure what to do with the Building the Education Revolution program, equivocating between saying and doing anything to discredit it and trying to associate themselves with it whilst they are at home.

But there is no better example of how the Liberal Party is stuck in the past than the embrace of Work Choices we have seen this fortnight. What the Liberal Party has said on the record about Work Choices is characteristic of the kind of divided views we hear about so many issues. There are various factions in the Liberal Party when it comes to what they will say publicly about Work Choices. When it comes to what they will say publicly about award-stripping Australian workplace agreements, there is one faction centred around the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. She is straightforward about what she believes in. She is a loud and proud supporter of Australian workplace agreements and she is on the record as saying, ‘We have said common-law agreements are no substitute for statutory agreements.’

Then there are those who pretend in public that they believe Work Choices is dead and buried. There is probably no more louder proponent of this than the former Work Choices salesman, the current shadow Treasurer, who each and every day up until the 2007 election spruiked the benefits of Work Choices. But now he seeks to be taken seriously and says things like, ‘Work Choices is dead; it’s very dead.’

Then there is a third faction in the Liberal Party when it comes to Work Choices and Australian workplace agreements. There is the ‘let’s bide our time’ faction led by the member for Warringah, who is saying basically: ‘We shouldn’t come clean now. It may all be different by polling day.’ On Kerry O’Brien’s 7.30 Report, he said:

… we took our lumps on polling day and we accepted the verdict by effectively not opposing the Government’s workplace legislation. But things, I suspect, will be a little different by the time the next polling day comes around.

The ‘wait and see and then get it all back out of box before the election’ faction.

Then there is the faction that says the brand known as Work Choices is dead but Work Choices itself is alive. We have seen a number from this faction. Senator Mitch Fifield is a member of this faction. He said:

Don’t get me wrong. Of course, the brand and policy iteration known as ‘Work Choices’ is dead.

The member for O’Connor has put it even more frankly. He said:

The only problem with Work Choices was its name.

Which faction is the Leader of the Opposition in? True to a man desperately seeking support from any corner of his political party, he has been in all of them. At the Press Club on 25 November 2008, there he was saying very clearly:

We have heard the lessons of the 2007 election loud and clear.

WorkChoices is dead. The people have spoken.

Then, by March 2009, he was actually trying to blame that political position on the former Leader of the Opposition, the member of Bradfield, when on radio he said:

The person who said WorkChoices was dead was Brendan Nelson after the election.

Last weekend, we saw the Leader of the Opposition come out loud and proud as a Work Choices supporter. He is refusing to rule out individual statutory employment agreements. He is refusing to rule them out because he knows the one thing that unites the Liberal Party under all this division about public positioning is that they are the party of Work Choices and rip-offs. They were when they were in government, they are now and they will always be the party of Work Choices and ripping off working Australians. That is the position of Leader of the Opposition.