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

Clearly, there is now a strategy by the opposition to extend Work Choices. It is what they believe in and it is what they are trying to do. This is clearly a content-less filibuster in order to extend Work Choices. They do not want the Australian public, immediately after Easter, to have the reassurance that they can walk into workplaces knowing that no-one can ask them to sign an Australian workplace agreement that rips away award conditions. That is what Work Choices guaranteed. That is what it is guaranteeing even today. We are trying to get rid of it, and here we have a content-less filibuster to try and keep Work Choices going as long as possible.

We know that it was the position of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and many in her party room to keep Work Choices. But, as has been so well documented in the media, that was not the position of the balance of her party room, who actually wanted this legislation to go through. The opposition say they do not support, they do not oppose, they do not know and they really cannot think about it. The best thing they could do would be to let this legislation through into the Senate so that we can deliver to the Australian people on a reasonable timetable what they voted for. We know that the concept to actually do what the Australian people voted for in workplace relations strikes the Liberal Party as grandly odd because it is not a concept that has ever exercised the minds of the Liberal Party. They did not go to the 2004 election asking people what they wanted to vote for. They cooked up Work Choices in secret and then imposed it on the Australian people.

Can I say to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that it does strike me as passing strange that, having introduced Work Choices in this country and having fought the last election in favour of Work Choices, her criticism of the government now is apparently that we are not getting rid of it quickly enough! I mean, really! Mr Deputy Speaker, you would probably recall that industrial relations was one of the single biggest things talked about in the lead-up to the last election. It was not a side issue; it was at the centre of the election campaign. Anybody who had looked at Labor’s policy in the period before the last election—and millions of voting Australians did—would have found that it described absolutely that we would pass a transition bill to end the making of new Australian workplace agreements and that we would have a two-year transition period in which awards would be modernised. We said that people would have access to an individual transition employment agreement during that period but it would be strictly limited in terms of which employers could use it and for what categories of employees, and it would have to pass a full no disadvantage test against the underlying industrial instrument—that is, we would end the rip-offs. We said that we would then move to a substantive bill that delivered on the rest of Labor’s commitments.

We always clearly said in that policy, as part of promising a sensible and measured transition to the Australian people, that Australian workplace agreements that were in operation at the time of the passage of the transition bill would stay in operation for the balance of their term and then, in accordance with normal industrial relations law and practice, when they hit the nominal expiry date, people could make decisions about what to do next. One of the decisions they might make is that they would like to enter into a collective agreement. One of the decisions they might make is that they would like to enter into an individual common-law contract that respects the safety net. Of course, agreements in accordance with industrial law, whether they are collective agreements or individual agreements, continue to the nominal expiry date and beyond until people make that election about what they are going to do next.

What is the reason for that? The reason is to give people certainty. This is not a political point; this is ‘Labour Law 101’. There would be university lecture halls around this country that are having a more sophisticated dialogue than the opposition is capable of today. We promised this bill to the Australian people and the opposition apparently does not oppose it. So stop filibustering because, if you hold this bill up, any Australian who loses a condition will have you to hold responsible. (Time expired)

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