Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It just comes back to that. Government senators have shown hubris as they have stood up, and no less a person than Senator Sterle condescendingly threw an aside and said, ‘Well, there are some good employers.’ The truth of the matter is that this has nothing to do with employer-employee relationships. The bill we have been debating today, and will be debating all week and next week, with the Orwellian title ‘Fair Work Bill 2008’, has very little to do with the employer-employee relationships. The bill has absolutely nothing to do with the flexibility and honesty of those relationships, the personal relationships that are struck up in the workplace, but everything to do with the return of union power.