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

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I would have been as critical of that action as I was of Qantas's action. I would have described them both as extreme decisions and I would have had the government respond in precisely the same way. That is because I believe in balancing the interests of employees and trade unions and employers in workplaces. That is what the Fair Work Act is all about. That is why Work Choices was so wrong, because there is a pendulum in industrial relations between the interests of employees and employers and it is the job of government to keep that pendulum in the centre. The Liberal Party thought its job in government was to grab that pendulum and put it all the way up for employers, so employers could have everything they wanted and working people got smashed time after time after time.

In relation to other industrial action, let me make it very clear in case the Leader of the Opposition has not heard these things from the government. The government were critical of statements that people should not fly on Qantas. We were critical of those statements. They were wrong and they should never have been made. Of course they were the wrong statements. We did say consistently, publicly and privately, to the industrial parties, and the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport has been clear about the role he played in this—

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

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