Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am privileged to rise today to speak on this matter of urgency. I would like to speak not only as a responsible government senator but as a former trade unionist who represented a number of women in the airline industry, particularly in Qantas Flight Catering, and also as a parent. I am proud to say that my wife and I have brought up two fantastic kids who are off doing their own thing in the world, now. My wife would have loved to have had the opportunity to have paid maternity leave. We made the decision that we wanted kids and for that there were a lot of sacrifices. This is a wonderful initiative from the government to take the massive step forward to introduce paid maternity leave.

God bless the Greens. I certainly think sometimes they have the best interests of Australia at heart. They are opportunistic at times—one can understand that, because they do not have the numbers—but I will give them the benefit of the doubt when I need to. But they excuse the coalition, who stand up in this chamber when Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, has a thought bubble. He witnessed the latest polling. I do not know how the Liberals do their polling—through their focus groups or whatever—but all of a sudden, wowie, a party officer has found out that the Leader of the Opposition does not connect with young women! Having been photographed in budgie smugglers, which he could not even fill, no wonder he does not connect with the public!

This is a darn disgrace. They had 12 years when they had control of the tills. What did they do? It was very quiet over there. They did not talk about paid maternity leave. Sorry, I have misled the Senate; there was a statement on paid parental leave. It was the now Leader of the Opposition who uttered words something along the lines of ‘over my dead body’. Well, whoopee! They got the latest polls, saw Mr Abbott does not connect with women and thought, ‘My goodness, how can we fool the Australian public into thinking that we’—them over there—‘care for young families, mothers and working women?’ What an absolute farce!

The biggest farce—I was in this chamber last year witnessing it—was the swords-at-dawn caper of the extremist anti emissions trading and climate change mob, who decided to take the swords to their leader at the time, Mr Turnbull, after Mr Turnbull had got it through their caucus that he was going to send off Mr Macfarlane to negotiate with the government to get through an emissions trading scheme. Whoppee! It was great for five or six weeks. I have got to tell you, I was frightened walking through the staff canteen: every time a National or Liberal got near a knife I shuddered! There were knives flying. They could not wait to take out their leader. They took out their leader because of this ‘great big tax’ they were talking about. What do we have here? If $2.7 billion is not a great big tax—strike me down!—what is?

This is absolutely incredible. It is bad for them but it is worse for Australians. But Australian voters will not be fooled. Australian voters can see through the nonsense. The Leader of the Opposition, who took out Mr Turnbull because Mr Turnbull would not consult—he allegedly was not inclusive—has come out, after reading the polling, to make an announcement, but not through his caucus. Mind you, I would not like to take anything to that rabble, anyway.

The Leader of the Opposition did not even consult with big business. I am not in the pocket of big business. I am the last one, as a trade unionist, to ever be accused of being in the pocket of big business. But, my god, what planet are the opposition on? They think that they can impose a 1.7 per cent tax—this monstrous financial slug—on businesses. I will tell you some of the businesses. It is important that people understand what businesses we may be talking about. We are talking about ANZ—wowie, the banks! And the banks will not pass it on, will they? No, no, no!

Then there is Ramsay Health Care. Will the health funds pass the tax on? No, out of the goodness of their hearts they will just wear the 1.7 per cent slug! Then there is McDonald’s. This is getting worse. I mean no disrespect to these companies; they are major employers in this country, and I love major employers because they employ Australian workers. When Australian workers are employed they spend money—and it goes around and around and it is a wonderful situation. Medibank Private is another company that will probably cop the 1.7 per cent monstrous tax slug from that lot over there! Optus will not put the price of phone calls up! How could I be so silly? Look, here is another one that has jumped out at me—Shell Australia. Perish the thought that the big oil companies would pass the tax on! They will wear it; there’s no worries!

But here are the scary parts—these are really scary parts. Myers will be affected. Shopping will be affected, and there are a lot of women employed there. Coles has predominantly female employees. There is Woolworths, but it gets worse—Bunnings and David Jones. We hear the nonsense that the cost will be absorbed and that it will not be passed on. Those who say that are in cuckoo land. I cannot believe it. What planet are they on to believe this?

That mob on the other side of the chamber slagged off at us for our stimulus program to save 200,000 jobs—two MCGs full of workers whose jobs were saved because we initiated the stimulus program. What the heck do they think their policy would do to shoppers and purchasers? Your grog would go up. Consider Tabcorp. Crikey, I’m even going to cop it on my $10 bet on a Saturday. Oh me, oh my! But it gets worse. I will show you how united this lot on the other side of the chamber are! Only three or four hours ago we had the serial pest for breaking ranks, Senator Joyce—I think he holds a front bench spot now; he was gagged last time I heard and he is still gagged but here he is putting out a press release—with the headline ‘Joyce breaks ranks on parental leave’. ABC News reported:

Senator Joyce has agreed the extra tax will feed into the price of goods such as bread and milk ‘in a fashion’.

What the heck does ‘in a fashion’ mean? He clearly says that the tax is going to influence the price of bread, milk, fuel, clothing and everything that we purchase from those top 3,200 employers.

But it was not just Senator Joyce; we have a couple of different people on the other side of politics. I am allowed to call them ‘different’ because their own party calls them different. There is the ‘mad uncle’. We know who that is: the member for O’Connor. He has come out and recognised that it would be a massive big slug. They call him the mad uncle: it is Mr Tuckey. Mind you, it does not matter because all he does is bag everyone. The other is the member for Tangney—this is an interesting one. If Mr Tuckey is the mad uncle—