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

Rereading the brief, unfortunately, does not mean that an answer has been provided. If LNP redundancies in Queensland are so worthy of protection of rushed and hashed legislation in this place, I still cannot understand why, if the government actually believes in these things, local government employees are not being provided this so-called same protection. The coalition's position is quite clear: we believe that this is a lose-lose situation for potential employers of ex-public servants; it is also a loss for those ex-public servants made redundant because of the profligacy of the previous Queensland Labor government. But I still fail to understand why, if a local government were to go down this path, federal Labor's workplace relations justice juices are not working overtime to extend the same benefit to local government employees. So can the minister explain the moral, the practical, the financial or any difference between a state government employee who is made redundant and might be picked up by a private sector employer and a local government employee who might be picked up by a private sector employer in circumstances of being made redundant?