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

Of course I receive representations from members across the government about matters of concern to their constituents every day of the week, and I certainly received representations about things like supporting Holden during the global financial crisis, when we were working as hard as we possibly could to save jobs and the Leader of the Opposition was literally asleep.

We all know that the Leader of the Opposition is naming these businesses so he can then go and scare people who work in them. What I would say to the people who work in those businesses is: let us have a look at the track record. The Leader of the Opposition is a senior member of the government that said time after time that if we did not keep Work Choices then unemployment would skyrocket, industrial disputes would skyrocket, economic growth would plunge, we would not be competitive with the rest of the world and it would be the end of the mining industry. But every scare campaign point that they made about Work Choices has been proved by the benefit of experience since we got rid of Work Choices to be absolutely and completely wrong in every way. Jobs are being created, there is unemployment with a figure four in front of it, growth is being maintained, the resource sector has billions and billions of dollars of investment in the pipeline and industrial disputes are still on a trend down—every piece of the scare campaign about Work Choices was wrong. Here we have the Leader of the Opposition yet again engaged in a scare campaign. What working people should recognise is that if he has been so wrong on those occasions what is the likelihood that he is right now? None. So this scare campaign should be rejected for what it is—an attempt to cause anxiety, but not because the Leader of the Opposition is really interested in anybody's job. He has never been interested in anybody's job. He would have been active during the global financial crisis if he was genuinely interested in jobs. He would have opposed Work Choices if he was genuinely interested in job security. No, this is about chiselling out a bit of political interest against the national interest. He does not care who he hurts or who he scares in the meantime. This is a scare campaign that is really all about his political profit. There is not one bone in his body that is concerned in any way about the prospects of the working people in those businesses he has named. Of course, this is the man who gave them Work Choices. They are not going to believe he is concerned now.

Mr McCormack interjecting—

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