Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

This is one of the difficulties when you rush in legislation which does not come from anywhere other than a political agenda in either the office of the Prime Minister or the minister. The issues that are in this bill were not canvassed in the 250 submissions before the Fair Work Act Review Panel. The Fair Work Act Review Panel did not recommend this legislation, but the panel did make a recommendation in relation to voluntary redundancies, which is exceptionally important. I understand that in Queensland, out of the roughly 12,000 redundancies that have been announced, 10,400 are expected to be voluntary redundancies—and very generous redundancies. Here we have the government legislating one thing which is going to fly in the face of its own hand-picked review panel. We are asking: where is the justification for this when you have a firm recommendation from the review panel against what you are doing?