Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to mark a most regrettable political milestone in my home state of New South Wales. That milestone, the first 100 days of the O'Farrell government, has been nothing short of a disaster for my constituents on the Central Coast. During his extended job application, Premier O'Farrell gave absolut­ely no warning of what was to come. Indeed Mr O'Farrell has spent his first 100 days in government doing everything he said he would not do. He has attacked workers' rights, it seems that he is pushing ahead with retrospective legislation on the solar bonus scheme and he has dodged independent scrutiny, despite his promise to run an open and transparent government. Instead of acting on promises to address the cost of living, the O'Farrell government passed an 18 per cent increase in electricity prices onto families. To add insult to injury, the O'Farrell government will not begin new family energy rebate payments until July 2012.

The most unforgiveable act is Mr O'Farrell's shameless attack on the public sector workers of my region. His extreme Work Choices style legislation strips away the right to bargain for thousands of public sector employees and, in addition, it caps their pay rises at below the CPI, at 2.5 per cent. He has also locked out workers from accessing the umpire, the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission, an august institution that has provided balanced arbitrated settlements between employers and unions for decades.

I am sure this is already sounding familiar to many on this side of the House. If it walks like Work Choices, if it quacks like Work Choices and if it stinks like Work Choices, it is Work Choices. Senator Minchin in his valedictory speech in the Senate the other week was unapologetic about Work Choices. His criticism was not of the substance of the previous coalition government's misguided workplace agenda. There were no regrets there from the departing Senator Minchin. His regret was that the change had just not been incremental enough. What he was saying was that you cannot bludgeon work­ing people and take away their rights, because they will get angry and kick you. What you have to do, according to Senator Minchin, is to gradually steal away their rights and their freedom to provide for themselves and their families.

The Australian people have rejected Work Choices twice: once in 2007 and again in 2010, when the Leader of the Opposition tried to pretend that it was 'dead, buried and cremated'. I am confident that the Australian people will again reject Work Choices if this Leader of the Opposition leads his party into another federal election, just as the people of New South Wales will reject the O'Farrell government's disgraceful attack on public sector workers. This unbridled attack on workers by the legislation of the Liberals in New South Wales means that the nurses of Gosford Hospital, the ambulance drivers at Point Clare ambulance station, the fireys of the Umina fire brigade, the child protection workers and the mental health workers—all critical frontline service workers in the seat of Robertson—will be doing first-class jobs as they always do but, sadly, under an O'Farrell government, they will now be doing them for second-class wages.

There is some good news in this unholy mess, because good people will always stand up in the face of wrongdoing. I want to praise six members of Gosford City Council: councillors Maher, Doyle, Freewater, Latella and Macfadyen, and Councillor Scott, who led the charge. Councillor Scott's motion called on the council to write to the Premier and Central Coast Liberal MPs and call on them to repeal this terrible piece of legislation. When I look at the make-up of that group, I see that councillors Maher and Doyle are Independents, councillors Free­water and Latella are Greens and councillors Macfadyen and Scott are Labor Party representatives. Who opposed the motion? The two Liberal councillors. They went down on that night because what the O'Farrell government has done has simply been a terrible invasion of workers' rights in New South Wales.

In closing, I want to put on the record that a Liberal government in New South Wales in 100 days has revealed its true colours through a shameful, bullyboy intimidation of workers in the state of New South Wales. New South Wales voters have found out, just as Peter Reith found out, that you cannot trust a Liberal leader. (Time expired)