Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition’s stance on this is to oppose the amendment. One of the unfortunate consequences of this amendment, if it were to pass, would be that its application in practice would mean that, chances are, a casual employee would not last for 12 months. Every time you increase the cost of employment you decrease the opportunity of employment. As unemployment is going up in particular at the moment, I would have thought that these sorts of measures would be unwise. Even if the economy were zooming along very well and everybody had plenty of money, like there was about 18 months ago, we would still be opposing it because there are many casual employees who are in fact happy and want to be casual employees, and to make it more costly for them to be in that category may well cost them the opportunity of that ongoing employment. So we as a coalition, on the measure of jobs and small business, are opposed to this amendment.