Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Forty-two times, I am told, they voted against changing the unfair dismissal laws, no matter how many times this side took that issue to the people. We know that the Labor Party will strip those laws back. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, whom they keep in hiding—Julia Gillard—has described the laws as fundamentally bad policy, short-sighted and ridiculous. These laws cost an estimated $1.3 billion a year for Australian small business and kept a cap on job creation. Since they have been lifted we have seen growth go through the roof, with some 400,000 jobs being created in that period of time. Instead, Labor and their union mates want to abolish that and take us back to the past.

Senator Sterle spoke about a plan for the future. In fact, Labor’s plan is one for the past. It is a plan to take us back to laws that gave us high unemployment, higher industrial disputation and lower growth in real wages. That is the world they want to take us back to—all to keep their union mates, who have tipped more than $50 million into the ALP’s war chest over the last decades, happy and to deliver for them the power that they so need. (Time expired)