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

I repeat, at 10.16 pm last night, the Liberal Party went into the Senate with the very flaw that I brought to the House’s attention in question time corrected. There are two explanations for this course of conduct: (1) is that the shadow minister is completely incompetent—plausible; and (2) is that—and I think this is probably the correct one—the Liberal Party was involved in a deliberate plan to rip off redundancy entitlements from Australian workers and got caught.

This goes to prove that when it comes to workplace relations do not listen to what they say, watch what they do. The Leader of the Opposition is out there saying, ‘Work Choices is dead’, and then in the party room he is saying, ‘Let’s go in and fight to keep Work Choices alive’. The Leader of the Opposition is out there saying that they will respect Labor’s mandate on unfair dismissal, but the Liberal Party in this place are threatening to keep Work Choices alive on the basis of issues around unfair dismissal. The Liberal Party engaged in a redundancy rip-off. They denied it and then tried to fix it in the dead of night.

I say to the Australian people: always watch what they do, not what they say. And I say to senators as the rest of this debate unfolds—

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