Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Further, why have the government waited all this time to bring this legislation forward if they knew the issues were not thoroughly dealt with when the Fair Work Act was first passed? The Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry both expressed concerns over the references used to justify the bill and the fact that there is a failure here to acknowledge the gains made in recent years.

I believe that this casts doubts over the judgment of the Prime Minister, who said back when she was the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in the Rudd government:

I believe the Fair Work system is right.

…   …   …

We worked hard to get the balance right and I believe that the Fair Work act is right.

If the Fair Work Act is right, as the Prime Minister claimed, then why is it necessary to make these amendments today?

The coalition recognised when it was in government that there was a need to provide the TCF industry with additional protections, which were granted. At about the same time, the coalition government established the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, recognising that the building and construction industry required additional protections as well. The Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner worked. In 2010-11, the ABCC found 900 contraventions of Commonwealth workplace relations law. It conducted 401 investigations and successfully prosecuted 74 cases. It saw a drop in the number of working days lost per thousand employees and saw a 10 per cent increase in productivity in the building and construction industry. Yet the Prime Minister—the same person who claimed that the Fair Work Act was right, the same person who claims to want a robust industrial relations framework—is taking the sledgehammer to the ABCC and all the headway it has made in making the building and construction industry stable again.

See this speech in context