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

I will answer the points that have been raised so far in consideration in detail. I anticipate that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition will have some more. I hope that this is not a tactic to delay the passage of the bill through the House. Can I say, in relation to the Senate inquiry, the representations made by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition were completely wrong. We were always happy to have a Senate inquiry. The only thing we ever asked of the opposition was that they do it on the same time frame as the last Senate inquiry was done into their last workplace relations changes—that is, we asked the opposition to apply the same standards to itself as it sought to apply to others in government. I know consistency is a hard ask for this opposition, but to represent in this parliament that we opposed having a Senate inquiry on a proper time frame is not true.

Secondly, I am bemused, I would have to say, by the reference to Andrew Stewart. He is exactly the sort of person that Howard government ministers used to get up in question time and vilify because he had criticised Work Choices—remarkable indeed. I suggest to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that if she wants to ring up Andrew Stewart and ask him the simple question, ‘What did you think of Work Choices and do you think this is better?’ then she had better hold the phone away from her ear as he very loudly proclaims, ‘This is better for Australian working people’—because it so clearly is.

On the question of different agreements being in a workplace: now I have heard everything! This is a Liberal Party that changed workplace relations laws so that it is possible in one workplace for some workers to be on an award, for some to be on a collective agreement, for some to be on a pre-reform AWA, for some to be on a pre-fairness test AWA and for some to be on a post-fairness test AWA. Apparently the criticism of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is that we are introducing another employment instrument. Can I reassure the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that when Labor’s system is in full operation—unlike the mess that Work Choices has created—we will have the National Employment Standards and awards creating a modern, simple safety net. We will have people able to collectively bargain to get above that safety net or people able to enter into individual common-law contracts of employment—that is, our system will be a simpler one than the scrambled mess that has been created by Work Choices.

It is with some amusement that I note that one of the great debates of the last election—one of the key questions of ideology, one of the things that has defined what it is to be a Liberal in this country—now apparently comes down to a question of drafting. The opposition no longer want to be in government. They want to run the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. That is apparently their highest aspiration in life. They would prefer to be there drafting legislation. Drafting legislation might be the highest aspiration of the opposition, but at some point they are going to have to answer the question: what do they stand for? Do they still stand for Australian workplace agreements? Will they go to the next election reintroducing Australian workplace agreements? Is that what the opposition stand for, as they wander around saying: ‘We don’t support and we don’t oppose. Now we think we could have drafted it better, but we don’t support and we don’t oppose. We did have an amendment. Now we don’t have an amendment. We don’t know whether we will have amendments. Really, we don’t really know anything.’ Against that backdrop, I would seriously suggest to the opposition that, instead of pretending that they are parliamentary draftspeople, they actually say something about what they believe in and, if they are not able to do that, then they get out of the way of a government that knows what it believes it.

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