Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this evening, the member for Mayo referred to me as one of 'Don's children' and an SDA official, which indeed I was. I suppose metaphorically I may be one of 'Don's children', but I rise to speak about John's children—this Praetorian guard on the backbench, this bunch of young guns who have been talking about industrial relations reform. Although the opposition say that Work Choices is dead, the dream of extreme industrial relations laws lives on in the minds of those opposite, particularly those on the backbench. We know that the Liberal Party frontbench are now militantly committed to pretending nothing at all happened with industrial relations under a Liberal government, but we know that the backbench is very keen on extreme industrial relations change.

We see all these young Turks and we see there is a bit of tension between the frontbench and the backbench. The member for Mayo is out there constantly. I notice that the Business Spectator on 18 February this year called it the 'Briggs breakout' and said that he had kicked the sleeping dog of industrial relations. I am sure that sounded promising to the member for Mayo, but I do not think the Liberal Party frontbench would have appreciated it. In December 2010 the member for Mayo, in the Australian newspaper, said:

There are benefits for all of us of further industrial relations reform.

He also said:

This is a debate we must have. This is a reform road that must be travelled.

That is pretty serious stuff. We know that the member for Mayo was one of the architects in Mr Howard's office—one of the architects of Work Choices, one of the architects of taking away people's penalty rates, their job security and their conditions of employment. When he says 'deregulation' or 'a reform road' we know exactly what the member for Mayo has in mind.

Most recently we have had the member for Kooyong talk about industrial relations reform. In one of the Fairfax papers there was the headline 'Coalition push for fair work reform' to an article by Michelle Grattan, a very good journalist in the press gallery. It talked about how the member for Kooyong wanted to stop industrial action and talk about changes to the industrial relations laws. The story did talk about the reluctance of the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who was worried about the prospect of Labor successfully raising the spectre of Work Choices. So you can see there is a bit of tension between the backbench and the frontbench, between these young guns—John's children, if you like.

We also had the member for Higgins criticising the Australian Building and Construction Commission for having an inquiry into sham contracts. She said there was so-called sham contracting in the industry. Never mind that there have been prosecutions in that area, even by the ABCC. There have been only five employer prosecutions, but nevertheless prosecutions. We have these young guns who are trying to get on the frontbench and we have a far more cautious frontbench. The reason we have a cautious frontbench is that they are terrified that the Australian people will cotton on to their strategy of benign security in opposition—they will not touch wages, they will not touch penalty rates, they have somehow learnt their lesson. Of course, we know that that is a strategy based on subterfuge. We know that when they get into office they will do something entirely different. We can see this in the state of New South Wales, where Barry O'Farrell did not put anything in his 100-day plan—his 100-day a list of things he was going to do—and then turned on the working men and women of New South Wales the moment he obtained power. He passed laws butchering the International Relations Commission and restricting wages in the public sector.

We know there is this tension between the backbench and the frontbench—a tension between honesty and courage from the backbench and complete subterfuge and deliberate misleading of the Australian people as to their intentions from the frontbench. There is no doubt that deep in the coalition heart is malice against organised Labor, against working men and women, and a deep desire to reform the industrial relations system. We all know what reform means. It means losing penalty rates, losing job security and losing your conditions, and every worker in this country should be aware of it.

See this speech in context