Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I do not think the member for O’Connor appreciates the level of passion that the Australian people have seen from this opposition for the first time. Everything else has been: ‘We’re not sure what we think about this; we’ll wait to see what we think about that. We need to consult; we need to have the form of leadership that says, “I’m going to lead by finding out what everybody tells me to think and then, once they’ve told me, I’ll show that sort of leadership.”’ That has all been put out there. But then, finally, we get passion. And the same group of people who were able to be quite dismissive about taking away the rights of workers, the same group of people who had no plans for the future and were not willing to get passionate about somebody losing their entitlements, were able to find real passion today—because whose working lives were they talking about? Their own. Finally, we find members of the coalition caring about working families—their own working families. They are the only ones that you will see any level of passion about from the opposition.

Of all the people to have led the case for the opposition on this, we have the same person who did not care about 100 per cent of AWAs taking away at least one protected award condition but did care about what his working day would be like on a Friday. He did not care when 63 per cent of all agreements removed penalty rates but he did care whether or not he would get an RDO on a Friday. He did not care whether 52 per cent of AWAs removed shiftwork loadings but did care about whether or not he would get a bonus MPI to be able to put away some of the private members’ business. He did not care about 46 per cent of AWAs cutting public holiday payments but he did care, and did care passionately, about his alleged right to try to pick up a public holiday every Friday. Under this government—

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