Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

We've made it clear that we expect government business enterprises to exercise restraint. We've made that very clear. But there is also a reality that, as I said before, those opposite would be the first to criticise if those employers decided to ignore the contractual arrangements they had entered into with their employees. I have no doubt, if NBN had decided unilaterally to not deliver any of those at-risk components of payments, that NBN staff would have gone to union representatives, those union representatives would have gone to people like you, Senator Kitching, and you would have come here or to Senate estimates and sought to criticise the fact that employees weren't receiving what they had been contracted to receive and we were in breach of those contractual obligations. So don't come in here with a hypocritical stance when we know full well you would have gone and argued the opposite, had the opposite occurred.