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

Members across the government raise with me all the time issues of interest to their constituents. You would expect that, and it occurs. But because it is the Leader of the Opposition who is asking the question we all know where this is going. He is going to keep pursuing his scare campaign about people's jobs. It is absolutely irresponsible of the Leader of the Opposition to keep pursuing this kind of scare campaign. Here he is today pursuing it again, trying to personalise it to individual electorates, but it is the same scare campaign.

I understand that as the Leader of the Opposition pursues his scare campaign he is making people anxious. I would say to those people who have heard his words and who have become anxious from those words: remember the scare campaigns past that came to nothing. I have pointed out one today about Kakadu—a scare campaign by the Liberal and National parties that came to nothing. I was in this parliament as the shadow minister responsible for our workplace relations campaigning during the days of Work Choices. Day after day they came into this place, including the Leader of the Opposition, saying that if one word of the Work Choices act were changed—just one word—then jobs in this country would go backwards, there would be more unemployment, growth would go backwards, we would end the mining industry and there would be no more investment. Let us look at the track record compared with those words.

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