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

I thank the honourable member for Deakin for his question. I note at the outset that in the 138 days since Work Choices has been in operation 159,000 jobs have been created in Australia. That is an average of more than 1,000 jobs per day—something which the member for Deakin and I are very proud of. Despite this creation of jobs and a record low unemployment rate of 4.8 per cent, we continue to have a misleading and deceptive campaign by the ACTU and the ALP about Work Choices.

The latest of these cases in which they have been caught red-handed with misleading information involved, as the member for Deakin asked me about, employees at Lufthansa. Sharan Burrow, the President of the ACTU—and I remind the House that Sharan Burrow was the woman who, at the outset of this misleading campaign, made the infamous comment that it would be desirable to have the grieving family of a dead or injured worker to help their campaign; that is what Ms Burrow said at the start of this campaign and that set the tone for everything that has followed since in a misleading campaign—said yesterday about this matter at Lufthansa that the employees were denied the right of union representation. She said, and I quote from the transcript of her interview, ‘And refused point-blank when they asked for the union to be involved.’

This was what was peddled by the President of the ACTU yesterday, and it is simply plain wrong. The very respected legal firm Blake Dawson Waldron, one of the most respected legal firms in Australia, wrote to the Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate in relation to this matter.

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