Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

As I outlined yesterday, Labor is delivering on the National Employment Standards. Yesterday, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister released the National Employment Standards, which will come into effect in January 2010. Unlike those opposite, we in this government will provide a guaranteed safety net of 10 minimum conditions of employment. I remind the chamber that it is double the number of conditions guaranteed by the former government’s Australian fair pay and conditions standard. Again, this is the Rudd Labor government delivering on its election commitments to provide a fair and flexible industrial relations system of which the government can be proud and which was promised to the Australian people prior to the election. Over the last 24 hours we have seen the opposition asking: ‘What about this?’ ‘What about this?’ ‘What about this?’ What the Australian people will be asking is: where was this opposition, when in government, when people were having their conditions and wages stripped away by Australian workplace agreements under Work Choices? Where was Senator Fisher then? Was she asking the minister for workplace relations then what the impact was on low-paid workers of the award-stripping Australian workplace agreements?