Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Legislation has the potential to impact on the everyday lives of Australians. I am amazed that the Deputy Prime Minister seeks to ridicule the evidence given before a Senate inquiry. She seeks to ridicule the evidence given before a Senate inquiry as to the complexity and the flawed nature of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 and she seeks to ridicule Professor Andrew Stewart, whose evidence was:

... the ... provisions remain unduly complicated and difficult to understand ...

I would suggest that Professor Stewart’s concerns be treated with respect. The premise upon which this bill is based—that is, the abolition of Australian workplace agreements—is in fact false. That is not what this bill does. The Labor Party have led the public to believe that individual statutory agreements will no longer exist in workplaces in Australia—certainly not beyond 2010. We all remember the statements in their document of April 2007—that is, the document of the now Deputy Prime Minister before the now Prime Minister had to come in and pull her into line. This document said on page 3:

AWAs and statutory individual contracts will not be a part of Labor’s fair and balanced workplace laws.

That is, in fact, not the case. Time after time, the Prime Minister, the then Leader of the Opposition, and the Deputy Prime Minister, the then shadow minister for workplace relations, said, for example:

Australian Workplace Agreements are no part of Labor’s industrial future for this country.

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