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

This has been taken from your website. One of the participants in your campaign—a participant in an advertisement that is supposedly about the entitlements of young workers—stands accused today, from two sources, of not properly paying wages. Your campaign has degenerated into farce. What you did in the face of that was to pull this advertisement overnight. It is off the TV screens and off the website. It will be out of the newspapers. You pulled this advertisement in view of this gross embarrassment.

Minister, having not told Australians the truth about this campaign, and still refusing to tell the truth—I doubt you are going to do it today—and having had it degenerate into farce overnight, why doesn’t the government simply do the right thing today? Doing the right thing is not a predisposition of the Howard government but why don’t you try and do the right thing today, and instead of just pulling this one advertisement why don’t you pull all of them off the TV screens? You have admitted that you are going to keep them on in the desperate hope that they impact on your polling. Why don’t you do the right thing—pull these advertisements off the TV screens, out of the newspapers and out of the bus stops? If you want to have party political propaganda on the TV screens then pay for it. Pay for it through the Liberal Party. Why don’t you do the right thing and, in this MPI today, tell us the history of the cost and the polling, and tell us the truth about the content? Acknowledge that this, today, has degenerated into farce and get it off our TV screens. (Time expired)

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