Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I ask the Prime Minister to confirm the evidence given in Senate estimates that, on Friday, 4 May, the day he announced changes to the industrial relations laws—formerly known as Work Choices—his office required full-page advertisements to be bought in national newspapers at a cost of $470,000 and published on 5 and 6 May, less than 24 hours after the announcement. Prime Minister, doesn’t this prove that your industrial relations changes were hastily cobbled together and are just an excuse for a taxpayer funded advertisement campaign? How is wasting hundreds of millions taxpayers’ dollars on pre-election PR campaigns compatible with prudent economic management, and how is it justifiable to working families under pressure?

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

Through you, Mr Speaker, let me inform the honourable member that I am perfectly happy to concede, to admit and to plead guilty and say that, having decided on the change and having announced it on the Friday, we had made arrangements to put some advertisements in the papers over the weekend. But bear this in mind: the change was to have effect from Sunday night. Didn’t we have an obligation to inform the public of the change? Those who sit opposite are being completely opportunistic about this issue. If we had made the announcement, which had effect from midnight on the following Sunday, having made it on Friday, without taking out any advertisements to inform the public of what was involved, those opposite would have come in here demanding to know why we had created confusion.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

They would have been demanding that—and you know that. The honourable member thinks he has got some question time blister on me by asking this absolutely Exocet like question. Of course we took out advertisements, of course we let the Australian public know what change we were making and of course that was the right thing to do.