Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The first thing I would like to say is to any of my children who are still awake: would you please go to bed; it is way past your bedtime. As to the other matter, I think this has been a fascinating day. There were great threats today from the Labor Party about their charge against Work Choices after its first 12 months—and it has fizzled out in six hours. Where are they lined up tonight to attack this ogre? It has gone. I rather suspect that the reason this has happened is that the Australian Labor Party are now in the mode of having what I would call hit-and-run attacks on various government policies. I am afraid that is a fair indication of where the Labor Party are at. Indeed, the fact that this chamber is not filled in the adjournment debate tonight with people talking about Work Choices is an example of this utterly duplicitous behaviour of the Australian Labor Party.

I want to talk about the things that I think are really important to the Australian community. Clearly, what we have seen over the last 12 months is a partnership that the Labor Party will simply not acknowledge. It is a partnership between employers and employees. The trouble with the Australian Labor Party is that they hate employers. They have always hated employers and they have done everything possible to make sure there is a divide between employees and employers. What the last 12 months has shown quite clearly is that it is a partnership based on mutual respect and trust. When the shackles were lifted from that relationship between employees and employers, guess what happened: we started to see the very thing we told you would happen. When the yoke of the unfair dismissal laws was lifted from employers, small business employers in particular, what happened? They started delivering more jobs.

But what are you saying to the small business community? You are going to wind it back. You talk about a change from the member for Brand to the present Leader of the Opposition. But this man is a greater wind-back expert than Kim Beazley ever was, and you will wind back that relationship to the detriment of one group of people only: the working men and women of Australia. They are the group that will suffer from your wind-back. They are the group who have benefited most from the changes we made 12 months ago, changes not based on any philosophical view about a relationship between employees and employers but on an understanding—which you will never have and you have never had—that the absolute fundamental relationship for the development of this country is between employers and employees. Until you recognise that—