Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator White, who is, again, one of the people on our side of the chamber who has a long history of standing up for the rights of workers, and also of forming very co-operative relationships with business in her career in the union movement. Senator White is a great example of what our government is trying to do, which is build partnerships between unions, workers and business for the benefit of the economy, for the benefit of those businesses and also for those workers.

I understand it's a foreign concept for those opposite, who just thrive on conflict and want to keep us in that conflict driven environment that we've been in for 10 years, but some of us actually want to move on. And, do you know what? So does small business. Let me just give one example of the small businesses out there that are actually looking forward to the kind of multi-employer bargaining that we are proposing to have. Now—