Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, we're obviously opposed to suspending standing orders and we're surprised they've done this immediately before a ministerial statement on Northern Australia. I'm surprised that they have actually decided that the Northern Australia debate isn't the one they want to have.

I am also quite astonished, just in terms of the tactics of those opposite, that they've waited until the bill is no longer before the House before they come in here to suspend standing orders to prevent the House from dealing with the bill. The bill's not here. It's gone. There's a red room on the other side of the water feature in the middle there, and that's where the bill has gone to.

Had this suspension been moved while the bill was here—we still would have opposed it, but procedurally I would have somehow understood what they were trying to do. But now we're being asked, as a house, to lay aside a piece of legislation that ain't here. It's not here. It's just not here. In the same way as when I was accused of being outside the room and I was here, the members opposite are saying that we need to 'do something about the bill that's in the House' except it isn't. It simply isn't here.

That's not the only detail that they're getting wrong, but I just want to start with this point: they went through all the things where they said, 'It's bad for this, it's bad for that,' but they never once said it was bad for people needing a pay rise. Even within their own rhetoric they know, deep down, that this legislation will get wages moving. And it's the fact that they know that that they oppose it so vehemently. You only had to look at Senator Birmingham's interview on Insiders on the weekend. He was asked by David Speers, 'What do you need to do to get wages moving?' He said you needed to do all the things that they were doing as the previous government. Well that was when wages were stagnant. What they have asked for is for exactly that approach to continue. We've seen that wages won't move unless we change the law. It is a simple fact.

And it's not surprising that whenever you try to get wages moving you will have a good number of industry groups, who are paid to represent their members, argue, 'We'd rather do this more slowly.' I get it. This legislation does mean that wages budgets will be higher, it does mean that, but it's off the back of wages hardly moving for a decade—in fact, to the point where, right now, workers are worse off than they were 10 years ago in real terms.

Now, those opposite—I've seen the MPI for later today; they're wanting to talk about the cost of living. How do you deal with the cost of living if wages are going backwards? How do you deal with the cost of living if wages are not moving for people—in fact, if real wages are going backwards? This is why those opposite have no credibility when it comes to arguing anything about cost of living when their determination is to prevent wages from moving.

I'm also amused with their whole argument about somehow all this is rushed. I know what it looks like when legislation is rushed. I remember ministers from the previous government coming in here with legislation and it going through that day. They would even come in without a copy for every member of the parliament to be able to read the legislation, and it would go through the House that day. If anyone opposite wants to indicate that they were denied a chance to speak in the debate on the bill, I'd really like them to indicate. I was up here, right up until the final moment, and no-one else rose to speak. That's when I gave the right-of-reply. No-one was denied a chance to speak in the House, no-one. Not one person was denied a chance to speak in the House. Not one.

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