Page 3767 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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families. A Rudd Labor government will abolish the most draconian and economically unwarranted piece of industrial relations legislation that this country has ever seen. I refer, of course, to the Work Choices legislation. And why will its own architects not refer to it by its name? Because even they can see the irony in the use of the word “choice”. The choice offered to workers is between a job on the boss’s terms or no job at all. The choice offered is illusory. And the Prime Minister is right: with another three years of the Liberals federally, the changes that have been imposed will become so deeply entrenched that reversing their worst effects will take a herculean effort.
What is mind-boggling is that the Prime Minister seems to think that that promise of entrenchment—a promise that sends a shiver up the spine of every working man and woman—is a reason to vote Liberal. Australian voters were not taken into the confidence of Mr Howard in the lead-up to the last federal election. His intentions in the sphere of industrial relations were secret. Where was the policy on the table, for all to see? Where was the opportunity for Australian workers to evaluate and understand the impact of the Work Choices package?
The impacts include the sidelining of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission—the independent umpire; the removal of unfair dismissal provisions for a majority of Australian workers; the abolition of the no-disadvantage test; the move to push workers off collective agreements and awards and onto individual agreements; and the loss of award conditions and entitlements. In other words, it is about the removal of basic protections built up over 100 years, fought for by the parents and grandparents of today’s workers. Under Work Choices, many workers had to trade away conditions that even a few years ago would have been regarded as basic to a life of dignity and respect: rest breaks, holidays, sick leave entitlements. That is before we even get down to such extravagances as penalty rates.
We all remember the Spotlight fiasco, and those AWAs that took away countless conditions and replaced them with a two-cent-an-hour pay increase. Is that what John Howard meant by fairness and flexibility? Is that what he meant by choice? Australia’s working families want a better deal, and under a Rudd federal Labor government they will get it. Australia deserves a Labor government at the federal level, and I am certainly amongst those that hope dearly and sincerely that on Saturday they will get it.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (5.07): The opposition certainly does not welcome the prospect of the election of a Labor government and we hope it does not happen. For the sake of Australia we certainly hope it does not come to pass—and it certainly will not do much for the ACT if it happens.
I will make a football analogy in relation to this election. Why on earth would anyone want to get rid of a successful coach and a first grade team that have won five premierships on the trot and show no inclination of not doing so again and replace them with an unproven coach and a team in which very few players have had experience in first grade and a lot show that they may well not be up to it? Why on earth would you change such a successful winning combination that has served this country and this territory so well?
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