Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I suspect that, if NBN Co had decided to ignore the contractual terms of employment that they have entered into with their employees, Senator Kitching and all of the other old union reps across there would have been complaining about the fact that a government instrumentality had unilaterally decided to tear up its employment contracts. We have a large number of NBN Co workers who are employed under terms where certain benchmarks have to be met for them to receive certain wage payments. We have simply met the legal contractual obligations. NBN Co has met those legal contractual arrangements. And I have no doubt that all of the union representatives over there would have been the first to complain if a government instrumentality, a government business enterprise, had actually torn up any of those contractual arrangements between the employer and the employee.