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

I thank the Deputy Leader of the Opposition for her question. What the government has provided in the budget—and it was a policy we announced before the last election—is $4 million, over four years, of assistance to go to a body that is participated in by the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, certainly, but also by employers and the fashion industry in general. The purpose of the committee—and I went to the launch—is that they seek to have employers sign up to an accreditation standard which is about how they treat their workers, most particularly on the question of outwork. Having signed that standard, it enables them to display on the garments that they make a No Sweat Shop label. I am sure that there are people around this country, including people sitting in this chamber right now and people in the galleries and people listening to the broadcast, who would if they could, through a label like a No Sweat Shop label, use the power of their purchasing dollar to indicate that they would prefer to buy and wear clothing that has not been made by outworkers in exploitative conditions. Many people would choose to do that. I think that is an important step forward.

Many people would have heard it on the radio and it has been investigated by a number of parliamentary committees: the evidence on this is very, very clear. Indeed, until this question, I would have said it was bipartisan policy in this House to provide special provision to outworkers. I note that even in the context of the darkest, darkest days of the Howard government when it was imposing Work Choices on working Australians—

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