Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly, we will not get an answer, because there is no answer. There is no justification—on workplace relations principles or workplace relations consistency, for any of the arguments that the parliamentary secretary has tried to make—as to why this bill is so important for Queensland public servants. This is so vitally important that local government has been deliberately left out. You could understand it if the government accidentally overlooked bringing local government workers into this vitally important safety net that every worker in Australia should benefit from. I hope those reading Hansard detect the irony in the wording and do not believe that what I have just said is actually coalition policy.

But we have been told by Labor that these are vitally important protections for workers. Mr Shorten even took a trip up to Queensland to bash up the Queensland Premier, who had to make some very tough decisions to overcome the economic vandalism left in the wake of the state Labor government up there.

If this is such an important, fundamental principle that needs rushed legislation in this place and if this rushed legislation actually covered local government workers—to provide them all these important protections—one wonders then why the government is deliberately moving an amendment to ensure an inconsistency, to ensure a lack of protection, to ensure that there is a second class of Australian worker in redundancy schemes. It makes no sense and it is yet again indicative of a government that has a shambolic legislative agenda, the nature of which is a direct consequence of putting politics before good, sound policy.

Question agreed to.