Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

ASU members are now openly talking about supporting the Greens and are openly questioning the relationship and the affiliation that they had with the Labor Party.

Then there is the pressure that we all know is coming from the Right of the Labor Party for the ASU to be muted in their criticism of the Gillard Labor government. All I can say is war has clearly been declared between the ASU and the Australian Labor Party. And we know this is true—this is not just me talking—because the Prime Minister of Australia yesterday had to go online and blog on the ALP’s website to frantically try to justify the ALP’s backflip on this issue. She went online in an attempt to clean up the mess that she herself created as a consequence of the Labor government’s betrayal of workers in the community sector by retreating from, by running a hundred miles from, their commitment to support and stand by low-paid community sector workers, who we know are predominantly women.

We on this side of the Senate often raise the issue of Labor’s spin over substance and the fact that Labor are happy to betray the workers and their principles if it means that they can hold on to power. Well, Labor’s rhetoric has well and truly caught up with them. I sympathise with the community sector employees and I say to them: you have every right to feel betrayed following the government’s submission to the test case. I say to Minister Chris Evans, who is now frantically putting out press releases justifying Labor’s position on the test case and demeaning all those who, like me, dare to criticise the Labor submission: all the press releases in the world will never detract from the ugly truth that the Labor Party of Australia and the Prime Minister of Australia have betrayed community sector employees. It is now a matter of record that the Australian Labor Party have dumped on their traditional supporters and that the unions are now furious with those in the Labor Party that they call turncoats. In fact, the unions have a very special word for those they call turncoats; they call them scabs. The unions must be looking at the government benches and wondering how a government with so many former union hacks as members and senators could turn its backs on them and betray them.

The Prime Minister of Australia admits her guilt. She admits that the government has betrayed low-paid community sector employees in the submission the government made to the ASU test case. If you go to the Prime Minister’s blog on the ALP website, this is what she says:

Yes, the Government has alerted FWA—

Fair Work Australia—

to the potential impact on the budget should a substantial wage increase be awarded.

In responding to that statement by the Prime Minister of Australia, community sector workers and their union are entitled to ask the Prime Minister why in 2009 she signed a heads of agreement with the ASU, pledging to support the ASU’s test case on pay equity for community sector employees, despite knowing at that time that the Labor government could never, ever afford to pay higher salaries if the ASU’s test case was successful. The ASU New South Wales Secretary, Sally McManus, made this statement about the government:

“They signed the heads of agreement in full knowledge of what it would cost …”

This exposes Labor’s hypocrisy and deception. Labor’s incompetence, ineptitude and negligent financial management was the same last year, in 2009, when the Prime Minister of Australia signed off on the heads of agreement, as it is now, when the Labor Party have been exposed because they had to put in their submission. Prime Minister Gillard knew last year the financial implications of supporting the test case, but she went ahead and signed the heads of agreement anyway because she knew at the time that she needed to get the support of those workers for the Labor Party. That was in the full knowledge that her government would never, ever honour their commitment, due to their financial incompetence. I say it again: the Prime Minister of Australia signed the agreement with the ASU, knowing full well that her signature on the document was worthless because her government would not in a million years be able to afford any pay rise that might actually flow from the test case.

To those on the other side who have been sent into this chamber in a desperate attempt to justify Labor’s position by saying that I and others have not read or perhaps did not understand the government’s submission, let me tell you what the ASU, community sector employees and I do understand. The Labor Party, in its submission, can dress it up with as much political rhetoric as it likes—