Melissa Parke (Fremantle, 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. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on recent comments about industrial relations and workplace participation policies and the need for certainty and clarity in such policies?

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

I thank the member for Fremantle for her question. I know that she is a person of steadfast view about the need for fairness in Australian workplaces. Because we believe in fairness in Australian workplaces, we introduced the Fair Work Act and the Fair Work Ombudsman. We also provided economic stimulus to our economy so Australian people could have jobs under decent working conditions. This was opposed by the opposition. They opposed economic stimulus, they opposed jobs and, of course, they opposed our changes to get rid of Work Choices. The Leader of the Opposition is there harbouring a desire to bring back his own version of Work Choices.

The Leader of the Opposition is not the only risk to Australian working families when it comes to decent working conditions. Today’s Hobart Mercury tells us that the Tasmanian Liberals are being challenged to come clean on their hardline Work Choices policies. The Liberals in Tasmania and the Leader of the Opposition are pining for Work Choices. What we know about the Leader of the Opposition is that he flip-flops. He says one thing and then he says another thing. There is no straight talk; he just flip-flops. He said, ‘The phrase Work Choices is dead.’ Then, when he was speaking to a business audience and thought he could get away with it, he endorsed individual statutory agreements that can rip away pay and conditions and he endorsed ripping away from Australian workers the ability to make unfair dismissal claims.

When the Leader of the Opposition was in government, he said about paid parental leave that it would happen over his ‘dead body’. As Leader of the Opposition, when he thinks on International Women’s Day he needs to come up with a hastily cobbled together policy announcement to try and create some appeal for Australian women, there he is announcing a paid parental leave scheme. He says one week that he does not believe tax should increase, that if he were Prime Minister he would not increase tax. Then, a few short weeks later, he announces a great big new tax on everything that his shadow finance minister has helpfully confirmed would feed into the price of bread and milk and add to the cost-of-living pressures on Australian working families.

It is no wonder that this was all too much for former Treasurer Peter Costello, who knows a fair bit about the Leader of the Opposition and who concluded that he was such an economic vandal, so economically irresponsible, that he was not even competent to serve as his deputy. There are those in the Liberal Party who still say that they believe in the brand of the Liberal Party, and Peter Costello says he has never been to a Liberal Party meeting where people put the case for more tax. I say to those people in the Liberal Party in this House: how much damage are they going to let the Leader of the Opposition do to the brand of what it is to be a Liberal, as he flip-flops from one thing to another, no taxes and then a great big new tax?

Should we be surprised? Of all the things that the Howard government misled Australians about during its 12 long years in office, nothing will stand out more in the public imagination than when the Leader of the Opposition, as minister for health, gave a rock-solid, ironclad guarantee before an election, only to trash his promise after the election. It is happening again. It has happened today on student income support. It just goes to show that when the Leader of the Opposition is talking it is not straight talk anybody is hearing.