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

You could see the faces of those in the Labor Party drop today when the Leader of the Opposition got up and said $37 million and the Prime Minister responded with $23 million. All of a sudden they lost all the helium in their balloon. That is because they talk it up. They want to convey a sense of outrage. They are doing everything they can, through their paid-up lackeys in the union movement, to run fear and innuendo. Appropriately, the government is responding. The media buy, I am advised, from 20 May to date, is $23 million. That is entirely consistent with what the Prime Minister said and with what I have said.

The first phase of the campaign ran from the 20th to the 28th. There has been advertising from 4 July providing information about, in particular, the workplace relations fact sheet, which under the law has to go out to every employee in the federal system. So far, one million fact sheets have gone out from the Workplace Authority. More than 100,000 fact sheets are being downloaded from the Workplace Authority internet site. Calls to the Workplace Infoline have increased from around 15,000 a week before the campaign to over 20,000 a week now—in fact, in some cases there are above 5,000 a day. Overwhelmingly, the calls are for information. The largest number of calls is from employees checking their wages and conditions. Of course, the Labor Party wants the union bosses to be the only place where employees can go, and the only way you can get information or help from a union boss is by paying a fee. Referrals to the Ombudsman from the Workplace Infoline have increased. Since the introduction of the fairness test, nearly 90,000 AWAs, more than 1,000 collective agreements and 862 union collective agreements have been lodged.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition feigns outrage. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition wants us to pull out factual ads so they can be substituted not only with ACTU ads which are untrue, misleading and full of lies and innuendo but also with ads from the Victorian government or the Western Australian government—state Labor governments that are using state taxpayers’ money to run a campaign against the federal government on federal laws. And you know what? The state governments and the Labor Party are full of hypocrites. They could recall the power from the Commonwealth at any time—they could revoke their referral of power on the Corporations Law to the Commonwealth. But they are cowards and hypocrites. They are not prepared to tell the truth to the Australian people, not only about the laws as they stand but, significantly, about their alternative policies.

We had a good look at the ACTU ads. It is estimated that between January 2005 and June 2007 the ACTU spent in excess of $15 million creating fear and telling lies about the government’s laws. That is in addition to the over $3 million in production costs the ACTU have spent. That does not include the recent CFMEU campaign or the ETU advertisements on radio in Queensland. Old Dean Mighell from the ETU—kissy, kissy!—is the Deputy Leader of the Opposition’s good friend. The Victorian advocate recently admitted to spending $1.3 million on advertising, and the Western Australian minister for industrial relations would not in any way disclose how much the Western Australian government has spent.

Imagine if just before a state election the federal government funded ads telling people it was okay to drink and drive in Western Australia or it was okay to do 80 in a 60 zone in Victoria. That is what the state governments are doing with federal laws, our workplace relations laws. They are telling people that you can get away with what is unlawful activity. If we were advertising before an election in Victoria saying it was okay to do 80 in a 60 zone or in Western Australia saying it was okay to drink as much as you wanted and get on the road, the Western Australian and Victorian governments would be rightly outraged. That is what the state Labor governments, who are accruing $70 billion of debt, are spending their current taxpayers’ money on—running ads against the federal government on laws that they could claw back at any time in order to run a fear campaign that creates uncertainty in the community. And when we go to correct the facts, the hypocrites in the Labor Party tell us to stop.

Let us focus a bit on hypocrisy. Section 150B of the Workplace Relations Act says:

(1)

The functions of the Workplace Authority Director are as follows:

(a)

to promote an understanding of Commonwealth workplace relations legislation ...

So the Labor Party voted for a bill that directs the Director of the Workplace Authority to go out and promote the laws and now they criticise her for doing it. In fact, a cowardly Labor MP who refused to be identified engaged in smear and innuendo against a damn hardworking public servant, to the shame of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition.

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