Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

And I do not think the minister at the table should laugh at this, because he comes from a tradition which is respectful of this—and that tradition says that human beings in families are such a basic social institution that they deserve special protections. When you instead have a set of laws which says that you can be told to work at any time of the day, at any place and for virtually whatever rate of pay, that your hours can include weekends or whatever and that you can have your shifts and rosters changed at a moment’s notice, just pause for a moment. Let us think through where that all goes in terms of the impact on working families.

Let us pretend for a moment that we are not in this place. Let us imagine ourselves in the suburbs of Brisbane, in Wagga, in Perth—out there in any place in the country right now—with our families, trying to plan our weekend ahead. Put yourself in that position. Can I predict now that I will be able take the kids to soccer on Saturday morning? Can I predict ahead even—if I am a churchgoer—that we can go to church together on Sunday morning? Can I predict ahead that I can be at home on Saturday night for dinner with my family? Can I predict in any way anything that makes it possible for me to preserve my family life?

It is not an accident—and the minister at the table should reflect on this—that the Catholic Church has come out so strongly on this question. The Catholic Church does not come out and cheer for the Labor Party every day of the week; we know that. But, when you strip this back, it is about what happens to families. When you analyse it carefully, it is about a family’s ability to stay together and have time together. We all know, with our fractured lives in this place, how difficult it becomes when we as human beings cannot spend time with one another. However, the problem is that these industrial relations laws now set that disease in place right across the nation in every workplace, in every part of the country. What I fear most of all is the ultimate impact of this on the fabric of Australian family life. This country has been made great through the solidity of our families for its more than two centuries of European settlement and the honour in which families were held in the period beyond European settlement.

When I ask questions today in this place about family values and the self-proclaimed party of family values, I am serious about it, because I believe that this party in government has lost its own origins on this question. Menzies would never have legislated this. Menzies would never have the gall to legislate this. Menzies would have recognised that there is such a great breach in the social contract involved in this legislation that he could never have done it.

We offer a different set of values for Australia’s future. The government, at its essentials, is ‘me, myself and I’. As for us, we believe that there is a central place for the market. The market is a wonderful, creative and innovative thing in the economy and it produces unprecedented wealth. But we have also come from a tradition that says the free market has its limitations. There are such things as market failure. There are such things as public goods, like education and like health. There are also fundamental protections for human beings and families, who should be protected from the market.

The bogus proposition, which has been put by those opposite for over a decade or so now, is that somehow we from the Centre Left of politics in this country and around the world have been disoriented by the fall of the Iron Curtain. Our movement for a century fought against Marxism, if you bother to read your history. We have had nothing to do with Marxism and madness. We have always seen our role as what we can do to civilise the market. That is where we come from as a tradition. Why do you think Keynes and the rest of them were called upon to try to save market capitalism from itself after the Great Depression? Because social democrats believed that you had to have constraints placed around the market, otherwise it becomes too destructive indeed.

So, when it comes to our Labor values of equity, sustainability and compassion, we do not just believe that these in themselves are self-evident and worthy of being pursued; we also hold that they are values necessary to enhance the market itself. If we do not take sustainability and climate change seriously, what will happen to the future of the market economy? Sustainability is a core Labor value. It is also one that goes amidships into the agenda of the global market economy. If we do not rescue this planet from itself in terms of the damage being done to it by unrestrained market capitalism, let me tell you: the entire market system ultimately will fragment. That is the tradition we have come from proudly for 100 years.

Labor’s message then is this: we believe in a strong economy; we believe also in a fair go for all, not just for some. That is Labor’s message in a nutshell. When it comes to fairness, a fair go, some people think that this just mysteriously grew out of the soil one day in Australia. Do you know that it did not? Our movement etched it into the Australian soul through the 19th century and the 20th century. If you read the history of 19th century Australia, you will not see much about a fair go; there is nothing about fairness. With our industrial movement—which has been so criticised by those opposite today—and with our political movement from the 1890s on, we took fairness and a sense of the fair go, we won political office, we obtained concessions in the workplace and we entrenched fairness in the statutes of the nation. We etched the fair go also into Australia’s consciousness, our political consciousness. It is our legacy to the nation—a legacy that the current government seeks to peel apart bit by bit, step by step and piece of legislation by piece of legislation.

We want a strong economy based on nation building. In the days ahead—and in the weeks and months ahead as well—we will outline new and additional proposals about how we can do that better. But we will also be advancing proposals about how we intend to build and entrench our notion of a fair society, because these things travel in tandem. Those opposite have asked why we have raised federalism and questions on health in this parliament. There is no greater touchstone for the whole debate about fairness than health and hospitals. In the days ahead, you are going to see much more on this—and in the weeks and months ahead as well—because we believe that this is essential to any effective policy of fairness for our country.

So the battlelines are drawn in this great battle of ideas between us. In the 10 days or so ahead, when we leave this place, I will be travelling the country, taking this message out. This is not just a battle for ideas; it is a battle on the ground as well. I say to those opposite: we intend to prevail in this battle of ideas, on the ground, right through to the next election. We intend to prevail.

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