Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The government opposes the amendments. The government's intention is to establish a body to provide advice to government and industry on skills and the labour market, and therefore it's important to have employer and employee representatives—unions and employers working together to deal with really significant challenges within this country. For the opposition to suggest that we should remove the worker voice entirely from this body speaks very much to the enmity they have towards organised labour and the rights of working people to be represented in this country.

Now, we made it clear before the election that we would have a tripartite body established, and, as a result of that, we are enacting legislation. The governance arrangements are such that the ministerial advisory board is going to have equal representation of workers and employers on that body—along with others. For that reason, we cannot support these. I also note that, despite the efforts of the opposition to have others come out and support these amendments, no employer body or, for that matter, other stakeholders have publicly supported the opposition with respect to these amendments, and that's because they are completely out of step with how training and skills are engaged with, in industry. Whatever differences employers and unions might have from to time, they work on things together, whether it's superannuation or training and skills. We need to bring people together. The Jobs and Skills Summit was about convening constituent parts of our society and our economy to work together to deal with the structural challenges the country faces. This legislation is in keeping with that approach, and that's why it's impossible for us to support both the amendments and the reasoning behind the amendments, because they are contrary to the commitments we made to the Australian people before the election and they completely undermine the workers' voice on this important body.

I hear the Deputy Leader of the Opposition suggest that there's still a capacity to appoint members, but this is a tripartite body with equal representation from employers and from workers, and we will not accede to these amendments.

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