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

I thank the member for Ryan for his interesting question. The first part of his question was: do I agree with the minister for small business that he has the balance right? The answer is yes. The second part of my answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows. One of the reasons why the minister and the government have got the balance right is because we believe that all workers should have a right to redundancy. We believe that Work Choices should not be allowed to strip away redundancy entitlements. We believe we have the balance right because we believe that all workers should have the right to be properly compensated for and provided with public holidays, with overtime payments and penalty rates. These things were all stripped away by the legislation which the member for Ryan voted for in the last parliament. He stripped away protections for redundancy payments, overtime payments, penalty rates and public holidays when he voted for Work Choices in the previous parliament.

My point to the member for Ryan and the people he associates with on this matter is simply this: does he support the statement made by the Leader of the Opposition that Work Choices is dead? Does he support the Leader of the Opposition, who said that the government has a mandate to proceed with its implementation of unfair dismissal laws for small business? Does he support that or is he remaining mute and silent on this question? It seems that the position taken by the Leader of the Opposition increasingly swings in the breeze on this.

The member for O’Connor made a very interesting observation at the doors this morning. Basically, it was all about this: the Leader of the Opposition went out there—ahead of the party room, ahead of the member for Higgins—in making these proclamations that Work Choices was dead and that the government had a mandate to proceed with its proposed changes to unfair dismissal laws. That is it in a nutshell. What we have seen, I think, is a very pathetic spectacle in the parliament today: the Leader of the Opposition being reined in not just on climate change, not just on Work Choices and not just, as we have already seen, on economic stimulus strategies, but right across the board. In fact, what we have seen on the part of the opposition is policy development paralysed by the opportunism which arises from its own internal leadership conflict.

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