Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I was asked about threats, and these threats have been highlighted in almost every major newspaper in Australia today. The Advertiser from Adelaide has ‘Beazley fires wide of a sitting duck’; the West Australian newspaper, from the Leader of the Opposition’s own state, ‘Beazley plans return to an unwanted past’; and the Herald Sun, in Melbourne, ‘Beazley steps backwards’. But of course it was one above all that really hit the mark, and that was the Sydney Morning Herald, with ‘Beazley’s real agenda: his job’.

Every major newspaper in Australia has condemned this weak response by the Leader of the Opposition over the weekend—simply doing their bidding in return for $50 million from the unions in Australia. What is next? Have we got the secret accord coming along? Already we have the union leaders in New South Wales, John Robertson and the like, gloating that the Leader of the Opposition can now keep his job—as if it was a gift of the union bosses in Australia that the Leader of the Opposition can keep his job.

In relation to these matters, as the Prime Minister said, the reality for Australians is this: a 4.9 per cent unemployment rate announced last week, the first time in 30 years that unemployment has gone under five per cent in Australia. What we had under the Leader of the Opposition, when he was the employment minister, was 11 per cent unemployment—

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