Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I'm going to tell you the answer! The first reason I joined the Liberal Party was small business. My father ran a small business that did well and then was driven into the ground by policies enforced by a Labor government. I've seen what Labor does to small businesses firsthand. We saw what it did to families, particularly in my state of Victoria. Victoria was devastated in the 1990s.

When I spoke during the second reading debate for the IR bill earlier this month, I went to a fable. Sometimes fables are quite instructive. I spoke about the scorpion and the frog. How the scorpion, wanting to cross the river, thought they would do a bargain with the frog. The frog, not trusting the scorpion, said: 'Why would I give you a lift? You'll sting me and kill us both halfway across the river.' But the clever scorpion asked: 'Why would I do that? We would both die and that wouldn't make any sense.' Accepting that logic, the frog said, 'Jump on board and let's go.' Halfway across, the scorpion stings and they both sink and they both die. As he's dying, the frog said, 'Why did you do that?' And the scorpion said: 'I can't help myself. It's in my nature.' And I made the point to the Labor Party, when it comes to attacking small business, that this is in your nature; you cannot help yourselves.

But I didn't get the fable quite right because there's another way to tell it, there's a better way to tell it. It wasn't a frog. There's another fable where an elephant is crossing the river and it also gets asked for a lift by a scorpion. The elephant asks the same question as the frog: 'Why would I trust you? You will sting me and we will both die and we will both be doomed.' Again the scorpion says: 'Of course I won't do that. That doesn't make any sense.' The elephant agrees and the scorpion jumps on board. He moves from the back to the trunk because the elephant's quite heavy and sinks in the water. At the tip of the trunk, halfway across, the elephant flicks the scorpion off. And the scorpion says, 'Why did you do that?' And the elephant says, 'Because I heard about you and the frog.'

We remember what the Labor Party do to small business, and small business won't forget. It doesn't matter how far back you have to go; we will judge you on what you do, not what you say. Small business are ready to give you the flick, and you have given them every reason to do that. And just like the scorpion, they won't trust you not to act on your instincts, not to act on your nature.

The member for Perth spoke about the 1980s. We all know of lots of cultural icons of the 1980s. And while members opposite might like to say they've got experience in small business, and maybe even channel Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, we're not talking about the 1980s. We're talking about those opposite taking us back to 1970s. It's not Thatcher or Ronald Reagan; it's Ron Burgundy. That's where you want to take this country: to big cars, big flares, big unions and big inflation. That's the country you want to see. It's not a progressive, modern country that's flexible and looking to the future, interested in science and data; it is an old country, decades old, and we can do so much better than that.

In this IR act, the unions want to introduce bargaining fees for union members when negotiating enterprise agreements. They even call workers who aren't union members 'free riders'—'free riders' despite the fact that union membership is now less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce. So at a time when unions are less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce, we're seeing a case where they're putting pressure on the Albanese government to legislate their relevance, and that is what is happening here. But don't just trust me, trust so many others who are critical of this bill, including the Reserve Bank governor who earlier this week said, 'We need, at this time more than ever, to put flexibility back into our workplace agreements.' So if you don't want to listen to us, please listen to the Reserve Bank governor because he knows something about managing inflation in this country.

I'm more than happy to do that! I conclude with this: instead of focusing on delivering cost-of-living relief to Australians before Christmas, the government is only focused on giving unions— (Time expired)

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