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

I again make the point that the course of action the government embarked on has given us the results we wanted to see, which is an end of industrial action and Qantas planes taking back to the sky so that people can proceed on their travel plans with certainty. I have been very concerned about the circumstances of stranded passengers. As I have said publicly and am happy to repeat in this place, I view Qantas's action on Saturday as extreme. I view it as extreme because they stranded tens of thousands of people around our nation and around the world. With the industrial action now at an end, those passengers can start seeing Qantas planes flying again and be able to resume their journeys.

During this period in which the government has been acting and attending to the national interest, of course the Leader of the Opposition has been playing his usual negative politics. In particular, the Leader of the Opposition has been seeking to make political points about section 431 of the Fair Work Act. As usual, the Leader of the Opposition grabs onto the politics but he never does any of the work that would be necessary in order to actually analyse the situation and act in the national interest. The Leader of the Opposition never bothered to turn his mind to the national interest.

Let me, for the purpose of the parliamentary record, explain to the Leader of the Opposition the workings of section 431 of the act. This is a section of last resort. It appears in the Fair Work Act and it appeared in earlier legislation. It has never been used. A minister cannot use it until a minister is satisfied that there is a high threshold of significant damage to the national economy—the same test that Fair Work Australia directed itself to. The claims that the minister could have used this section prior to the escalation of the industrial dispute on Saturday are wholly untrue, and anybody who provided him with legal advice to the contrary would have been providing him with the wrong advice.

The dispute escalated on Saturday. I would say to the Leader of the Opposition that the power under section 431 is capable of judicial review. It has never been used before. It would have taken us into wholly new legal terrain, so we determined on Saturday to use section 424—which has been effective—to get the result we wanted, which was to get planes back into the sky. I would also note on the record for the purpose of completeness that we were advised by the relevant department that in these circumstances the appropriate section to use was section 424. The Leader of the Opposition obviously wanted to get the nation on a journey of potentially never-ending litigation. I wanted to get this dispute resolved, and I have done so.

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