Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after ‘condemning forthwith’ be omitted in order to substitute the following words: ‘the Prime Minister’.

The Prime Minister will do anything or say anything to avoid the implications of the extreme industrial relations legislation that he has introduced into this parliament. In the run-up to the last election he told the Australian people nothing of these things. He did that deliberately, he did that advisedly and he did that to deliberately deceive the Australian public about his intentions in industrial relations. Not only did he not detail what he was proposing to do, when asked about these issues at the Liberal Party industrial relations policy launch he said there would be no changes, there would be no such thing as a single system, and the allowable matters would stay. And now that he has been caught out by the great concern of the Australian people, the Prime Minister and his minister will do anything or say anything in this place or outside of this place to avoid the repercussions on the ground that are occurring.

This particular case, the rebuilding of the new headquarters of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with the assistance of sparkies—electricians—employed by Martin Donnelly Electrical Services, started yesterday in question time. Two questions where the Prime Minister—

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