Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I'm taking the interjection. This is a government that says, 'We're for working people, but we're going to vote against penalty rates; we're going to vote to refuse to restore penalty rates'—for people who depend on penalty rates to pay their bills and put food on the table. It's an utter disgrace. You voted against the restoration of penalty rates.

Senator Payne interjecting—

You may never have had to struggle, Senator Payne, but people who are relying on penalty rates do, and the fact that you walked away from them says something about you. You're pushing this bill through with your own integrity in tatters: a minister under investigation by police, a special strike force for a criminal offence, a PM who is interfering in that police investigation and a Prime Minister who is loose with the truth and who shows nothing but contempt for parliament and the principles of ministerial integrity and accountability, and you can't even bring yourselves to say in the parliament that the member for Chisholm is a fit and proper person. You can't even say that.

There has never been a government with less integrity than you lot. You are all about one standard for yourselves and your mates and another for Australian workers. Well, we on this side will not stand for it. We on this side will do what we did with Work Choices. We will fight this legislation in here and we will fight it between now and the next election and we will expose your hypocrisy and your anti-worker bias, which has always been the Liberal DNA.