Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

We asked who the Treasurer was. The Prime Minister has lost it, because he did not know. He did not take responsibility because he simply never does. Then we come to the issue which above any other will see us win the next election and that is the attack by this government with its extreme industrial relations legislation. This government wants to impose on our kids American style degrees where you have to pay $100,000 and American style working conditions where you work simply for tips. We know that this Prime Minister is presiding over a system of a wages race to the bottom. The great surrender: the Prime Minister’s surrender to China and India. Let us not compete on the high-skills, high-value, high-economic growth road. Let us go the low-wage, low-skill road, a surrender of our children’s future.

What the Prime Minister is saying is that we will not try to compete with those economies on exports and our intellectual capacity; we will try to compete with them on wages. I asked the Prime Minister last week about the Tristar steering factory in my electorate, where 60 fine Australian workers, with an average service of about 25 years, are facing redundancy after 30 September. Why after 30 September? It is because that is when their enterprise bargaining agreement runs out. Instead of receiving four weeks pay per year of service, the company is waiting until 30 September and then, when the workers are made redundant, they are likely to be entitled to just 12 weeks pay instead. The fine people I have met have up to 40 years service and therefore would be entitled to 160 weeks pay. That is what we will see: as agreements run out, this government will use this extreme legislation. It is a surrender of everything that has made this country great—the idea of a fair go and the idea of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. That is what we are seeing under this government.

We have seen a complete surrender on climate change. It is just too hard for the government to make the tough decisions that are needed, for example introducing a national emissions trading system, ratifying Kyoto and being part of the global effort. There is a complete surrender on water. Today there is less water in the Murray than there has been for 100 years. And what has the government done about it?

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