Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

In the few seconds that remain could I urge government members to consider our amendments and support them to ensure people get full compensation, to ensure that there are some protections for changes—getting notice of changes to rosters and shifts, and redundancy—and for better protections of Good Friday, Christmas Day and Anzac Day. If the government think there should be a longer list of public holidays better protected then we are happy to vote for it, but before the House today we have better protections for some very significant days for members of the Australian community and there is no reason why anyone should vote against those better protections.

In the course of votes this evening, there will be a vote on the amendments moved by the member for Calare. Could I indicate that the opposition will not be voting for those amendments. They have within them making the government’s new test retrospective. Whilst we can understand the sentiment of the member for Calare, we do not believe it is appropriate to try and retrospectively apply this new test to the many thousands of Australian workplace agreements that have been entered into in the last 13 months. The government has two amendments itself—one on bargaining fees and one on mending a problem with federal registration of unions, mainly the police union—and we will support both of those.

See this speech in context