Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is absolutely easy to stand here this afternoon and refute the claims of those opposite—that our government is unable to run an honest, transparent and accountable administration. You only need to look back on our record since we have been in government, since 2007, and to look at some of our achievements and identify those matters and the transparency with which we have delivered them.

Let us start with Work Choices. We promised to get rid of Work Choices and we did. Everyone should be reminded about that insidious policy that those opposite delivered, which made four million workers lose basic protections and which made more than a million workers suffer real pay cuts of up to $90 a week. This is something that those opposite are proud of and that they want to re-introduce should they ever form government again. Around 2.8 million workers lost legal protection against unfair sackings—sackings that I saw as a union official before I started my career here.

Let us not forget the Australian workplace agreements that cut penalty rates, overtime, public holidays, shift allowances and rest breaks. Women and casuals were the worst-affected by Australian workplace agreements—which Mr Tony Abbott says were 'one of the greatest achievements of the Howard government' and 'not all bad'. They were so bad that, before they came into government, they were not even prepared to have the debate on their grand plan of Work Choices.

During the global financial crisis, the quick thinking of the Labor government saw an investment of $42 billion for our Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan. It created jobs and prevented our nation from going into recession. We should not forget that those opposite opposed that stimulus package. They opposed people being secure in their employment. They opposed infrastructure rebuilds and facilities around our nation. We saw investment in schools under the Building the Education Revolution, with more than 9,500 schools nationally receiving new facilities such as science and language centres, multipurpose halls, outdoor covered learning centres, resource centres—and the list goes on. As a duty senator for five electorates in the state of Queensland—Longman, Dickson, Brisbane, Forde and Wright—I get around and see a lot of openings of these facilities and I have a great opportunity to receive the gratitude from principals, teachers, parents and students who are so proud that our government has invested in education. This is an area that was neglected under the coalition during their term. There has been around 100 per cent positivity about our great investment from the people in those communities. Last week, I attended eight Building the Education Revolution openings throughout my five duty seats.