Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Don’t worry about him, he’s on autogibber. Twenty meatworkers have been locked out of their workplace for wanting an EBA over an AWA, and their employer is allowed to bring in Chinese workers because he says he cannot get skilled labour. You are all so arrogant, aren’t you? You are so arrogant—you just think that the world owes you a living, that you have no problems at all. This is the most arrogant out-of-touch government, and we have two of the worst culprits in it at the table. You will learn your lesson in time, my friends. You will find that you will be learning your lesson when meatworkers, for example, are locked out of their workplace for wanting an EBA over an AWA and then you permit an employer to bring in Chinese workers—after he has locked his people out, who want an EBA, which you said was voluntary—and he then says, ‘You can have an EBA, if you want.’ What an unmitigated lie! You lock them out and you bring in overseas workers to replace them.

How many of these people do you reckon you can sustain and sustain politically because you can get a lot of them? There are going to be a lot of these events—I have so far cited six of these events in the course of the last few minutes. They are now starting to snowball; they are occurring at an increasing rate. But they all have the same source. Some of them are related to these sorts of issues that we are discussing in this debate; some of them are related to other things. All of them relate to your Industrial Relations Act. I am so looking forward to this debate. Over the next 18 months, I am so looking forward to the opportunity to take on the Prime Minister. Even my supporters here are anxious to get into it now, so I am going to permit them to do so.

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