Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Very sensitive—so sensitive. You're very happy to dish it out but you don't like it when people call it out, do you? You dish it out across the chamber to the President but you don't like it when people call you out.

Those opposite say they care about pay equity. This bill seeks to deal with some of those pay equity issues by banning pay secrecy clauses and giving the Fair Work Commission the powers to deal with pay equity. This is the bill they're fighting so hard against. New limits on rolling contracts—another equity provision. There are all these aspects of the legislation that they do not wish to debate. They want the debate to be about just one thing, because they don't actually want to deal with the real issue: at its heart, this bill is about trying to make Australian workplaces fairer and get wages moving again. That is what this bill is about. You cannot join with that issue, can you, because, fundamentally, you don't agree with it. No matter how much debate, no matter how much so-called scrutiny, you are ideologically, historically and forever committed to opposing this bill. We all remember from the last election the dollar pay increase, and the way in which your then government responded. Australians remember that. What is clear from the way in which you have dealt with this debate on this bill is you haven't learnt the lesson.