Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When you stand at the podium of the Federation Chamber and you speak on the importance of key economic issues, the foundation on which your speech rests, the substance of the narrative that you seek to progress and, in particular, the motion that you table should be based on one simple expectation: that you tell the truth—that you reflect honesty. When you think about the lack of trust that many Australians have in their political system today, you only need to look at the motion that sits on the table before us now to know why that trust is in decline. What you have is an opposition that gets up and perpetuates an image and an idea that the government has robbed Australians, when the only thing that stands as a marker is their own legacy of how they created the very situation that they now complain about.

Let's not misunderstand: most people wrongly think that politics is about the answers people give—the choice between one type of vision for Australia or another that we want. That is not true. Politics is a choice between the types of questions that people want to ask. Yes, you can have questions like: how do we create a working environment where those people who work enjoy the maximum benefits available to them? Or you can ask: how do we create an industrial relations system to secure maximum employment?

Now, let's not be under any misunderstanding: the opposition has always been in the former camp. How do they maximise the benefits for those people who donate to their cause?

They always work towards not the worker but the union member and those who feather their nests, turn up to their polling booths, and game the political system as much as possible for themselves, versus the alternative—which is how we always look at it, as Liberals: how we are going to maximise the number of Australians who can stand on their own two feet, who are in the best position to be able to take care of them and their families and secure the gains of this country for every Australian.

That's why we have a record number of Australians working under this government. It's not an accident. It's because it goes to the core of our sense of purpose—why we are in this place: because we want the best, not just for those select few, as the opposition would have it, but for everybody.

But the dishonesty at the heart of this motion is the fraudulent argument that what they are complaining about is the burden of the government. What they're complaining about is that the Fair Work Commission—that they established, with the rules that they wrote and the commissioner that they appointed—made a decision on the reference they requested and it didn't turn out the way they wanted. And that is the heart and the nub of the matter. And what they want in response is an unconstitutional proposition—that the government gets involved in wage setting. It might make for good social media, interviews and speeches, for the member proposing the motion to get up and speak and show an empathy to constituents who have to suffer the consequences of Labor's commission and Labor's rules under Labor's commissioner, under the decision that they requested. But it's not honest, because they are put aside and cast aside. And to suggest that the pathway is simply to introduce unconstitutional legislation to set wage prices is ridiculous.

And of course the trade-off is on trust. We know that it's not just the basis of the motion that they've got wrong; it's almost everything that they've got wrong!

The unions and the opposition have claimed that 700,000 employees are affected by the commission they requested, the rules they wrote and the commissioner they appointed—and, of course, the review they requested, and was found wrong by none other than the RMIT/ABC Fact Check. In March 2017, the department estimated that the cuts to Sunday penalty rates were nowhere near what they claimed they would be. It's time for the truth. (Time expired)

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