Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I unreservedly withdraw. I should have said ‘silly’. The Leader of the House is absolutely right. I should have said ‘the misogynist and the silly man’. I go back to the ugly face of the Howard government on display to the Australian people. What they have not asked themselves with their tricky little game today, where they come in with the document and read the best bits, is why the workers are worried about this AWA. Ask yourself that simple little question. Those sparkies are worried about this AWA because they know it hurts them. That is why they have complained. That is the real world—not the Howard government’s world of carry-on, arrogance and ugliness. That is what these tradesmen actually thought—that this AWA was going to hurt them. This is a government that is now so imprisoned in its arrogance it cannot see that reality.

The member for Jagajaga has had great fun at the expense of the minister for education about her absurd carry-on about Maoism. Actually, I think it is Maoism that has taken over the government frontbench. The peasants are happy in their little collectives, off implementing the next five-year plan, with all that arrogance and unreality, believing that every worker in this country is happy with their new extreme industrial relations laws when day after day the evidence from the Australian community is the complete reverse. There are the electricians who complained about their AWA. There are the Spotlight workers who complained about their AWA. There are workers around this country that have rung up members of parliament and said: ‘I’m afraid. I think I need to sign the AWA. I don’t want you to use my name publicly because I’m so scared.’ That means that for every story we hear this place there are hundreds of thousands that go untold. You can stay—

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