Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I am rather amused at the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who has the gall to criticise us about our workplace relations regime—or industrial relations regime or Work Choices policy or the various authorities—and yet does not even understand her own policy. Because what we have discovered over the period since the Labor Party policy was released is that she could not even get the constitutional footing of Fair Work Australia, their one-stop shop, which became a two-stop shop when she had to roll in a judicial commission and then a three-stop shop when she was rolling in the Australian Building and Construction Commission. She could not even get the constitutional footing for the main body, this super creation that is going to control industrial relations from one workplace in Perth to another in Sydney and everywhere in between. She could not even get that right, and then: ‘Oops. We have 10 minimum standards, but we forgot the minimum wage. How did we leave out the minimum wage?’ In the negotiations between Greg Combet and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, they are talking about their trade-offs so that Greg Combet can come into parliament. They are more worried about Greg Combet’s job than they are about the jobs of over 10 million working Australians. And of course she forgets the minimum wage. Where did the minimum wage go?

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