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

I thank the member for Kingston for her question. I know she cares about fairness and decency at work, and I know that, like Australians around the country, she was appalled at the Liberal Party’s Work Choices rip-offs. She was appalled that working people had penalty rates ripped off them. She was appalled that working people had redundancy pay ripped off them without a cent of compensation. She was appalled that good workers were dismissed for no reason at all, with no remedy. And she campaigned for the return of fairness and decency at work and the end of Work Choices. The member for Kingston, like other Australians, may have been entitled to think, when the Leader of the Opposition went out to the Australian people and said, ‘Work Choices is dead,’ that he meant it. But, of course, from the weekend, we know that the Leader of the Opposition is so out of touch that he believes the solution, in the middle of a global recession, is to have laws that enable working Australians to lose basic pay and conditions including penalty rates.

People might be wondering to themselves, ‘How on earth did the Leader of the Opposition come to this conclusion—apart from personally being so out of touch?’ Well, he does not have very good advisers amongst his political party and his backbench. Starting with his advisers from the backbench, we have the member for O’Connor, who, clearly, in interjections when the Minister for Housing—

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