Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I am referring to the fact that industrial disputation is subject to the industrial relations laws of the time and general economic circumstances. Secondly, those opposite have not yet given their consent in the Senate to the passage of this government’s industrial relations reforms. Therefore it is entirely material that when the alternative leader of the opposition was asked this morning whether this legislation should be rejected in the Senate he answered:

Well, this legislation in the form that it is should not be passed.

In other words, what the alternative leader of the opposition is now saying definitively is that those representing the Liberal Party in the Senate should block this legislation. The Leader of the Opposition currently, the member for Wentworth, has basically engaged in a strategy where their policy on industrial relations so far in the Senate is one of duck and cover; that is, ‘Let’s not tell anybody what we are going to do should amendments be rejected in the Senate.’ That is their position. The person who has given definition to this is the next leader of the opposition.

See this speech in context