Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The other side, with great sanctimony, talk about penalty rates. But it was in fact Bill Shorten, when he was the head of the AWU, who sold his workers out—the most disenfranchised, the most lowly paid workers. He sold them out; he threw them under a bus. And for what? So that his own AWU could get secret commissions from those same employers they did dodgy deals with. And it turns out there are all sorts of grubby, dodgy deals being done between the AWU and GetUp!, and in fact the Leader of the Opposition, who's seen, as it turns out, payments being made to his election campaigns. To add salt to the wound, they then set out to try to discredit one of Australia's greatest jurists and undermine the Heydon royal commission—very, very sad, particularly when you look at the number of legal professionals on the other side of the House, that they would go and do that.

But it's not just about industrial relations. The difference between us and them is stark in relation to taxes. On our side of the House we've got an agenda to provide and promote jobs and growth. We've achieved record job numbers. Just today we've found out that there were 240,000 new jobs in the last financial year, the strongest full-time jobs growth in 40 years, with 210,800 jobs added just in the past six months—and I see the other side have gone awfully, awfully quiet! Unemployment dropped down to 5.6 per cent, with jobs growth at two per cent—10 times the rate of growth. The Turnbull government are all about jobs—make no mistake about that—and we are getting on with the job.

But it's not just about jobs; it's about security. We are getting on with the things that are important to Australians, whilst the other lot, over on the other side of the House—what are they concentrating on? They're concentrating on doing things like arguing about two seconds. The member for Watson was arguing about two seconds today.

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