Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In his reply to the budget speech we saw the Leader of the Opposition make an unusual declaration of love. It is a recent declaration of love, a recent affection for the manufacturing workers of this country. Since he made that very public and not entirely credible declaration of love for the manufacturing workers of this country, he has been running around the country like a speed dater attempting to secure some affection from those he professes to stand for. It has been a pretty crowded space, because we see that the member for Indi has jettisoned her previous position in relation to this particular sector and has also joined the Leader of the Opposition in declaring her love and affection for this particular group of workers in the manufacturing industry.

The reason it lacks credibility is that it does not sit very well—in fact, it sits uneasily—with their record on manufacturing jobs and rights for manufacturing workers when they were in government. That is right. It sits very unwell with their track record of looking after manufacturing workers and manufacturing jobs when they were in office. Under their watch and in the government of which the shadow spokesperson, the member for Indi, was a member, we saw the loss of 10,000 manufacturing jobs and the closure of literally thousands of plants, and there was not a squeak in their defence from those on the other side of the chamber. Where were they? What were they doing in defence of those manufacturing workers? I can tell you what they were doing. They were introducing the Work Choices legislation. I can guarantee you that, as the Leader of the Opposition continues on his speed-dating trip around the country, there are a few coalmines that he will not be visiting. They are the coalmines in the Hunter—and I see the member for Capricornia in the chamber—and some of the coalmines in the member for Capricornia's electorate, where workers were being stood down under the previous government's Work Choices legislation for taking action to defend their jobs and to defend job security. They were amongst the hundreds of thousands of workers in this country who lost rights to secure their jobs under the Work Choices legislation. So it is a pretty hard ask for the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Indi to walk out to some of those workplaces and say: 'Forget what we did. Forget the fact that when we were in government we did everything we possibly could to undermine your job security. We want you to forget all of that. Forget the sins of the past because we have a newfound affection for jobs in your industries.' It is not only the sins of the past, because if they are elected to the Treasury benches we can only assume that they will make good their promise to slash assistance to the manufacturing industry. They have a very confused position on this issue.

In debates earlier today in this chamber we saw the member for Fadden making the extraordinary claim that somehow those of us on this side of the chamber were kowtowing to the unions and were in the unions' pockets when we advanced legislation to secure the rights of workers and their retirement savings. Then, in debates later in the day, they say that we have ignored those of our constituency whom we seek to represent. Theirs is a confused position indeed.

What is more confused than that is the confusion that we see from the Leader of the Opposition. He has made this new declaration of love for the manufacturing workers of this country, but in the wake of that declaration there are a few jilted lovers out there.

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