What does Tony Abbott have to hide? One day to go and still no Industrial Relations Policy.
Jason Clare,Simon Crean
posted Friday, 20 August 2010
With one day to go in the federal election campaign, Australian workers are still waiting for Tony Abbott’s industrial relations policy.
This is despite his Shadow Industrial Relations Minister, Eric Abetz, saying on the first day of the election campaign that he would release the full policy “very shortly”.
MR ABETZ: We’ll be announcing our full policy, I used to say in due course, I can now say very shortly.
Senator Eric Abetz, ABC Newsradio, 17 July 2010
That was 34 days ago. Now with just one day until election day, Australian workers are yet to see what Tony Abbott’s “full policy” actually is.
The Coalition obviously has an industrial relations policy. It promised to release the policy over a month ago. The continued silence begs the question of what Tony Abbott has to hide.
Maybe it is taking so long because the Coalition is trying to replace all of the references to WorkChoices with tricky language and weasel words.
There are signposts that WorkChoices is far from dead. The HR Nicholls Society has confirmed workers’ rights can be wound back through changes to regulations, without needing to change industrial relations legislation. University of Adelaide law professor, Andrew Stewart confirmed this, saying this week that the Coalition could "comfortably make radical change" to industrial relations legislation without changing the laws. (The Australian, 16 August, page 5).
We know that Tony Abbott has repeatedly promised business groups that a Liberal government would remove unfair dismissal rights for employees of small businesses and would bring back individual contracts – AWAs. Tony Abbott has told business groups that weekend penalty rates should go.
And they can strip away these workplace entitlements through regulations and Ministerial orders, without amending the fair Work Act itself. But Tony Abbott will not rule this out.
How can Australian workers trust Tony Abbott not to bring back WorkChoices when he is now refusing to release his policy?
He said on the 7:30 report that we can’t trust anything he says unless it is written down.
TONY ABBOTT: Well, again Kerry, I know politicians are gonna be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks.
Tony Abbott, 7:30 Report, 17 May 2010
If we can only trust what is written down, where is it? Where is his policy?
Tony Abbott says that WorkChoices is dead. But if WorkChoices was really dead, Tony Abbott would have no problem releasing the body for examination.
Tags: Abbott, Abetz, Eric, Tony, WorkChoices