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

Apart from that startling admission that these ads are wholly hostage to the political fortunes of the Howard government, and we will see more of them if those political fortunes do not turn around, the interesting thing about the Prime Minister’s admission today is it is a complete contradiction—indeed, a complete repudiation—of what this minister said to this House on 22 May about the costs of these advertisements. On that day, when he was asked about the costs of these advertisements, the minister decided to belittle the Labor Party as if it could not read the budget papers.

I asked him what the government was going to spend on these advertisements, what the expenditure was going to be, and with a condescending tone he said: ‘Oh, get out the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Check in there the allocations for the public awareness services of the Office of Workplace Services and the Office of the Employment Advocate. If you cared about this, you should have asked about it at the time the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook was tabled. How could you not know that that is the source of the funds?’ This was the demeanour of the minister on that day, 22 May. Well, Minister, you have got a problem, and the problem is this: in your own words, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook says that the government will provide $20.5 million over four years to raise public awareness of the services of the Office of Workplace Services and the Office of the Employment Advocate, now renamed the Workplace Authority and the Workplace Ombudsman.

Today in question time, Minister, the Prime Minister gave you up, because that statement cannot be true if the statement of the Prime Minister at the dispatch box today was true. One of you in this House has not accurately told the Australian people the truth about the expenditure on these ads. Honestly, you do not need to be a marketing guru to know that the saturation of these ads has been more than $20.5 million over four years—it would be $20 million in the last month! Indeed, the Prime Minister has confirmed that. So the minister on 22 May misled this parliament about the cost of these advertisements and, through this parliament, misled the Australian people. That is undeniable—it is undeniable on the Hansard record. And that is just the start of the trickiness and deceit when it comes to this campaign. Of course it does not end there, because the minister is going to get up and say: ‘This is an information campaign. This is about telling Australians what their rights and entitlements are at work.’ But we know that is not true either. This campaign was wholly revealed on Friday in the Australian newspaper as the product of polling, pure and simple.

When this parliament last sat, we knew that there was polling. Now we know more. There was an Open Mind preliminary research report on 20 April. There was another report on 24 April for developmental research for communications purposes. There was another report on 3 May. There was another report on 4 May—a final report. And there are two more reports that we do not know the dates of, but they are for the evaluation of the so-called ‘fairness test’. But what we now do know in the public domain about this research is that it is the polling that led to the advertising campaign. It was not the need to inform Australians about what their rights or entitlements at work were that led to this campaign; it was the polling. So express is this—it is so naked; it is so transparent—it is just remarkable. The polling report that was leaked indicates that advertising agencies were given the chance to suggest a marketable person to head the Workplace Authority. The report says:

Identifying an appropriate figurehead for this organisation will be critical.

It continues:

This is very much a public role, requiring an individual with a strong reputation for independence, commonsense and an empathy/understanding of the average Australian circumstances.

Then it canvasses names—Allan Fels, Bernie Fraser—of the kinds of people who could front this organisation. So we have not only a purpose designed advertising campaign to sell the government’s research but a purpose designed authority. The authority is not about helping people with their rights and entitlements. The ads are not about helping people understand their rights and entitlements. It is all about the foundation stone for an advertising campaign. This, pure and simple, has been disclosed in the pages of our newspapers as the product of the government’s polling research—nothing else. Nothing else was operating on the government’s mind when it came to this campaign. And once again, Minister, you know that it cannot be denied that it was a product of the polling.

Then there was the content of the campaign, because it was entitled ‘Know where you stand’. Minister, if Australians were going to know where they stood, wouldn’t you make sure that you had messages out there in the advertising like the following? An employee can still be offered a take-it-or-leave-it AWA as a condition of employment or promotion. Know where you stand, Minister. That is right, isn’t it? An employee can still be sacked for no reason or any reason and not have an unfair dismissal remedy. That is certainly true for people in businesses of under 100 employees. That is right, Minister; tick that box.

If a young worker is given an AWA that cuts award conditions—and they still can—then the parents can do nothing about it except tell their child not to take the job. That is true, Minister, isn’t it? Know where you stand. An employer can ask an employee to work on a public holiday and the employee cannot simply say no. They have to say why it is not reasonable for them to have the day off. Well, know where you stand, Minister; that is true as well. If every employee in a workplace wants a collective agreement the employer can just refuse and employees have no say. Know where you stand, Minister; that is true as well.

The so-called fairness test does not guarantee any compensation for employees losing important award entitlements like redundancy pay or rostering protections that help them balance work and family life. Know where you stand, Minister; that is true. The Workplace Authority has not made a dent in the pile of 55,000 agreements waiting to be assessed. Know where you stand; that is also true. Even though an employee might get a so-called fact sheet about the so-called fairness test, if they signed an AWA that stripped them of penalty rates, rostering and overtime last year, then you would do nothing about that. They are marooned. They are on that contract. Indeed, you encouraged employers to offer those sorts of AWAs through your Work Choices propaganda and, particularly, the example of Billy, who had a minimum wage job and lost all of his conditions for not one cent of compensation.

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