Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the case of Tisha Vimpani, sacked and escorted from her job at a Sydney RSL club for chewing the Nicorette gum that helps her quit smoking. Can the Prime Minister confirm that, given Ms Vimpani’s workplace had fewer than 100 workers, her sacking was completely within the letter of his new laws? Is the Prime Minister aware of Ms Vimpani’s comments: ‘I need the money and now I haven’t got any. I care for my elderly mother and being at the club was really good because she could call in. They knew that I care for mum and mum was my biggest concern. What do I do now?’ Prime Minister, what does she do now that you have taken away her unfair dismissal protection?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not aware, nor is it possible for me to be aware, of the individual circumstances of the almost 10,000 changes in employment—I am told 10,000 people a week around Australia go into or go out of jobs. As the member for Perth knows, it is quite impossible for me to know the individual circumstances. But, generally speaking in relation to unfair dismissals, I do know that over the 12 or 13 years that unfair dismissal laws have operated in Australia they have cost tens of thousands of jobs. There have been tens of thousands of Australians who otherwise would have had jobs in this country who have not. I also know that there was a near universal call from the Australian small business community for a change in the area of unfair dismissals.

It was a call that had even lapped upon some Labor shores. It had even reached the Hunter, where the member for the electorate bearing that name is a person I know has spoken on occasions in favour of getting rid of the unfair dismissal laws because he does have a little resonance with small business. I think his wife has a very successful small business. The truth is that there was justification for changing the unfair dismissal laws, and I do not run away from the fact that we have changed them in relation to firms employing fewer than 100 people.