Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

They will just churn them over. The interns will be paid less than the national minimum wage. They will get equivalent to $14 an hour, where the national minimum wage is $17. You will have subsidised interns going into a labour market where there is record underemployment and record low wages, and there will be no protection for those interns. That is why there was a Senate report this week that condemned the government for it. We have no assurances, for example, that those young people will get adequate workers compensation coverage or any other protections on the way through. This is where we are at. The government are failing on everything they touch. They have no idea.

It has been a long year for those opposite. This has effectively been a wasted year. You can tell it has been a long year because, as the year goes on, they shrink further in their seats. There is only one person on that side of this place who is smiling. It is not that person; it is not that person; it is not the member for Bowman; it is not the member for Berowra; is the member for Warringah. He is the only one who smiles these days. Why wouldn't he? He does not have to be Prime Minister anymore. I know those opposite love outsourcing; I never thought they outsourced amongst themselves. Basically, the member for Warringah has outsourced his entire policy framework to the Prime Minister. I never thought I would say this about the Prime Minister, but he has actually become a poor man's version of Tony Abbott. There he is, doing everything that Tony Abbott would. He has not got a clue.

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