Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the third time this sitting that we find ourselves debating an MPI of this nature. It was not enough to raise this MPI yesterday or even to have the arguments being run yesterday during the disallowance motion; we also had it two weeks ago. The arguments that the ALP are running, their contributions on this debate, are frankly becoming repetitive. They have not just been repetitive in the last two or three weeks; they have been repetitive in the last 10 years. We have been hearing these same arguments over and over again—today, yesterday, two weeks ago, 10 years ago.

If we go back to 10 years ago, we know that those lines they were running back then about the conditions of the workers—they were going to be disastrously abolished because of our intended workplace relations changes—did not come about. In fact, we had the very reverse. We all remember that famous statement of the member for Perth back in 1995, which now comes back to haunt him. I know that he probably now regrets ever having said those words. He said:

The Howard model is quite simple. It is ... about lower wages; it is about worse conditions; it is about a massive rise in industrial disputation; it is about the abolition of safety nets; and it is about pushing down or abolishing minimum standards.

He said this back in 1995; he is saying it again now. We had the absurdity of the Leader of the Opposition, only a matter of a few weeks ago, claiming that divorce—(Quorum formed) Yes, the ALP should be embarrassed about the doomsaying statements that they keep making on industrial relations, whether it be back in 1995, last week or even in today’s MPI. These scare campaigns are continuing today. Even off the back of the disaster down at Beaconsfield, we had the ALP continuing with their scare campaigns and tactics when they were saying that occupational health and safety training was at risk because of the Work Choices legislation.

We know that the line they presented out there in the community was not supported by their actual belief. We know that because of the email from the member for Lilley, Mr Wayne Swan, that went out in response to a constituent. The constituent asked: ‘So the impression being given that employers are subject to $30,000 fines if they send employees to union run safety training courses is misleading?’ And the office of the member for Lilley said:

Yes, that is correct. Employees attending union-run training cannot be included in an agreement as a condition of employment but an employer can send employees to union training.

So they come in here, they run scare campaigns and scare tactics around Work Choices and the legislation and regulations that this government has introduced, but out there, privately, they know that Work Choices is in fact far from the disaster that they claim.

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations quite eloquently mentioned the advantages to the unemployed people who are taking up the AWAs with Spotlight: the 95 new jobs that have been created, 40 in Western Sydney alone. The member for Cunningham got up here and was basically saying that having a job is not a good start to getting on in life.

See this speech in context