Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

The roosters on the other side should listen to this because we now have a new answer to the perennial question: why did the chicken cross the road? The answer is not to get to the other side; it was to hold a press conference! That is why the chicken crossed the road. We now hear Mr Beazley, after three days of denying that he had anything to do with it, saying that he might in fact do a U-turn and come back across the road and change the policy on this. All I say to that particular chicken is this: if you’re going to cross the road so often because you can’t make up your mind, do you know what is going to happen? You’re going to get run over. And the Australian people at the next election will run over Mr Beazley and the Australian Labor Party for their lack of commitment to giving workers in this country real choice.

We are the party of choice. We are giving people employment; we are giving people real wage increases; and we are giving them the choice as to whether or not they want to be represented by a union. Once we gave them that choice, we have seen over 75 per cent of our fellow Australians in employment saying, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ to the trade union movement. Those opposite are locked into their trade unionism of about five decades ago. We are now in a new era where we give workers choice, and that is what they want, because it is delivering real improvements for them in the number of jobs, in real wage increases and also, most tellingly, in the lowest rate of industrial disputation since records were first kept in this country.