Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Productivity increases are good for the economy. They feed into a cycle that is good for the economy, including all economic indicators. Labor’s policy is of course about fairness at work—something members opposite never understood when they sat on this side and do not understand now when they sit over there. They do not understand that there is nothing fair about people going to work and having pay and conditions ripped off them. The member for North Sydney interjects: ‘There is nothing fair about people losing their jobs.’ Absolutely. That is why we are fixing the unfair dismissal laws. It was possible under Work Choices—your laws—and it is still possible under Work Choices today for an excellent worker who has done nothing wrong, who works in a business with fewer than 100 employees, to be dismissed without any reason and get no remedy. So do not sit there and tell me that it is good for jobs that an excellent worker who supports a family could be dismissed without reason or remedy—your laws; your industrial relations extremism; and more nonsense from the party of Work Choices.

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