Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

There was a time when the honourable member's leader—and I suspect the honourable member himself—supported the independent umpire, the Fair Work Commission. The Leader of the Opposition has been so eloquent that it would take days to go through his defence of the Fair Work Commission. To Leon Byner, 17 May last year, he said:

The best defence workers have is a strong independent umpire.

That is not bad! In Brisbane, on 1 June last year:

I've got full confidence in the independent umpire maintaining our penalty rates structure. Penalty rates were first introduced in Australia through the application of unions representing workers and arbitrated by the independent umpire. And the improvements … have always come through the independent umpire.

On the same day, on the idea that if you took away the independent umpire then somehow miraculously you trusted parliament to set the conditions in every Australian workplace, he said:

…that will be providing a loaded gun for a future Conservative government to radically reduce conditions in Australia.

Well, you have the current conservative government—

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