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

The shadow minister refers to senators. I can give him a little tip on the functioning of democracy in this country: there will never be an elected government formed entirely of senators. In order to be the government, you need to have the majority in this House of Representatives and you need to have the majority in the lower houses around the country. You need to be the government that the people voted for. When the elected representatives of elected governments around the country met, they worked on this agreement. It is not the creature of state bureaucracies; it is the creature of elected representatives. Yes, people had different views. Yes, there was lively discussion. In order to reach agreement, some people had to compromise on one thing or another thing and a consensus emerged. That consensus is in the intergovernmental agreement and we, the Commonwealth government—the national government—said in the course of making the agreement and as part of the agreement’s terms that we would come to this parliament with our best endeavours to turn what was agreed about the composition of this body, what was agreed about the voting structures of this body and what was agreed about the management and oversight of this body into law, and the Safe Work Australia Bill represents that agreement.

If, as the opposition is suggesting, we should go back and have these discussions again then what I am indicating to the opposition is that that has the potential to derail this process for many months. We are committed to an ambitious timetable of reform, with model laws as an exposure draft going to the Workplace Relations Ministerial Council during the course of next year, something the Howard government wanted to do and spectacularly failed to achieve. I understand the Liberal Party might have their views about what they would have said had they been in these meetings of elected representatives. But the reality is that the Liberal Party, because they are not the government of this country—and at some point they might want to consider that—were not in those meetings as those arrangements were being made. So the choice for the Liberal Party is a very clear one. They have expressed their view; I understand that. They have come to this parliament and have had an opportunity, in both the House and the Senate, to express their view, but ultimately the decision for them is a very clear one. Having expressed their view will they accept that the government, in line with the commitments it gave in the intergovernmental agreement, is going to pursue this legislation in the form in which it brought it to the parliament so we can acquit our obligations under the intergovernmental agreement and keep it moving, or are the Liberal Party going to dig in and prevent that? I am going to say once again to members of the Liberal party: if you do that, the government will report to the Council of Australian Governments and to the Australian business community that the occupational health and safety harmonisation process has been derailed by the Liberal Party.

I say, too, that the shadow minister—who I know has not been in this place for that long a time, but he was here in the last parliament—would recall the way in which the Howard government treated this chamber, and he may like to think, as he comes to the dispatch box engaging in rants and raves about the way in which parliament is proceeding, about some of the things that happened under the Howard government with his support. Can I remind him, for example, of the ramming through of the Work Choices bill. (Time expired)

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