Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, she is not hopeless; she is a very good minister. She is doing what every good South Australia cabinet minister should do. She is doing exactly what every good cabinet minister should have been doing under the Howard government but wasn’t. What were they doing? They were spending all their time in that cabinet working out ways of ripping penalty rates from 15-year-old shop assistants. They were not worried about water at all. They were worried about Work Choices and how they could take money out of the pockets of young working Australians. They were not just working out how to do it; they were advertising. I found out today when I asked the Parliamentary Library how much money was spent by the former government on advertising Work Choices. The only figures that are available so far are those for the period 2005-06. The figure is $31.8 million.