John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The ringing in my ears was the case of the former employee of that union in Victoria, the union that is run by—who is it?—Dean Mighell. In this case, an employee of the union was taking the union to the IRC complaining about an unfair dismissal. I wonder what law she was using. But the interesting thing is not what she was doing but what Dean’s response was. He said, ‘This is all nonsense’—he did not quite say that, but that will do for parliament—‘this is not an unfair dismissal, this is a genuine redundancy.’ In other words, when Cowra Abattoir does it, it is outrageous but, when the union does it, it is a genuine redundancy. That is what I mean by phoney.

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