Page 3575 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
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The court’s affirmation of the new legislation only provides further indication of the difficulty that Labor will have in convincing the people of Australia that it is the right party to lead Australia in these trying times. We have seen the lowest levels of unemployment in our history. We have seen reductions in industrial action, the likes of which we have not known for decades. We have seen the lowest levels of inflation achieved, in contrast to the era of the Keating government. Basically, we have seen a situation where our economy is growing in leaps and bounds.
All of this, of course, has happened in the 10 years of the Howard government and all of it has happened in a period when we were told, “There will be gloom and doom. As soon as you bring in the WorkChoices legislation, we will all be out of work, there will be industrial chaos, and we will look like some broken down Latin-American dictatorship.” That has not happened.
Labor is now in a desperate position. They have lost the court case. It was a waste of taxpayers’ money in the first place. That $95,000 could have been used to fix a few of the roads round this town. Of course, they have now got to try to convince the people of Australia that they really are in trouble. Mr Gentleman told us that the barbecues were going to go. We are still having them at my place. All these things that we were told would go wrong have not gone wrong.
Finally on that issue, I have to say that there are rules applying to candidates in terms of signage and where they should be applied. Apparently the union movement is exempt. It is violently and blatantly breaching the laws in Canberra related to the postage of the “your rights at work” signs and every complaint has been ignored by this territory government.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
The Assembly adjourned at 6.09 pm.
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