Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer her to the announcement today that more than 2,000 jobs are to be cut at air-conditioning and refrigeration company Hastie on top of thousands of earlier job losses in manufacturing industry, and I ask: isn't this the worst possible time to be hitting manufacturing with the world's biggest carbon tax?

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

Once again we see another disgraceful attempt by the Leader of the Opposition to rejoice in job losses and to try and join those job losses to his fear campaign about a price on carbon—a disgraceful attempt to try to make working people and their futures and their families grist to his political mill. The truth about this situation is as follows. I start by saying that of course I am very concerned whenever I hear about a job loss. I am always very concerned for the working person involved and for their family, which is why as a government we made sure during the global financial crisis that we supported jobs—we understood their importance to working people. With this group—the Hastie Group—which has entered voluntary administration, it is a complex situation.

The government is working closely with the insolvency practitioners involved to ensure timely assistance to the employees as the situation evolves. I note that the administrators are working with project managers to see if blue-collar employees can be transferred or made available to head contractors to complete projects currently underway. But all workers who are made redundant will be entitled to tailored support from Job Services Australia and we will ensure full provision of government support, including access to the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme for eligible employees in the appropriate circumstances. As the Leader of the Opposition well knows, the explanation for this circumstance is not carbon pricing, and he should not be trying to pretend to these working people—or, indeed, to any other Australian—that it is.