Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Here we go again—another piece of amending legislation introduced by this government to correct a problem created by previous legislation. Since this government came to power in 1996 they have been seeking to change the workplace relations system in this country. Once they obtained an absolute majority in the Senate after July 2005, they proceeded to do that—but to do it in a way that destroyed the concept of fairness and equity in the Australian industrial relations system.

I recall the many debates that I and other senators have participated in over the years. There were always two consistent features of the government’s legislation. One of them was that it was bad for workers and their families. The other feature was that they always tried to dress it up with a title that in reality reflected the opposite of what the legislation did. I remember they introduced the ‘More Jobs Better Pay’ legislation and then they introduced a bill dealing with unfair dismissals that was called the ‘Fair Dismissal Bill’. Here we have it again. We have this amending legislation that is entitled the Workplace Relations Amendment (A Stronger Safety Net) Bill 2007. This bill should really be entitled the ‘Workplace Relations Amendment (We Got it Wrong We Lied to You and Told You it Was a Fair Piece of Legislation but Now the Public Has Found Us Out and We Need to Fix This Problem in a Hurry Because We Don’t Want to Lose the Next Federal Election) Bill 2007’. That sums up precisely what this bill is about. It is a last desperate act by the Howard government to try and turn around the public outrage, the public condemnation and the public rejection of Work Choices. The hide of this government and their hypocrisy is that they are now going to spend millions more dollars of taxpayers’ funds in an attempt to persuade the public that this piece of legislation will undo the problems that the previous legislation created, on which they also spent millions of dollars trying to convince the public that it was in fact a fair system. They have no shame, they have no scruples, because they are desperate to try and hang onto the levers of power at all costs.