Senator Eric Abetz

Simon Crean should spend less time talking up the so called benefits of getting into bed with his old comrades in the union movement as industrial partners in the workplace and devote more time to fixing the industrial relations mess left for him to clean up by his predecessor Julia Gillard.

Since Labor’s new ‘so called’ Modern Awards scheme kicked in on the 1^st of July, my office has been inundated with complaints from workers and small business owners struggling to understand Labor’s new laws and frustrated by the complete lack of information and support from Labor’s Fair Work bureaucracy.

Julia Gillard promised that under her new scheme no worker would be worse off but they are.

Just ask Terang teenagers Matthew Spencer and Leticia Harrison and hundreds of others who have lost their jobs because of Labor’s new laws.

Just ask the thousands of employers who still have no idea what to pay their workers or what award they now fall under.

Just ask the thousands of Australian workers who face the prospect of having their hours cut or losing their jobs because of the increased costs Labor’s new laws have forced on their employers.

Julia Gillard promised that enterprise agreements would be simpler and less complicated and turned around in just 7 days.

But an examination of Labor’s Fair Work website shows more than 580 enterprise agreements going back to September last year have still not been approved.

Yet, according to people who have contacted my office, the response they get when they call Simon Crean’s office seeking advice is, “We’ve just taken over the portfolio and we don’t know anything about it, call back in a few weeks.”

Rather than wasting his, and everyone else’s, time wistfully reminiscing about his days as the keeper of Labor’s “light on the hill”, it’s time Simon Crean actually stepped up to the plate and started fixing the mess left by Julia Gillard before it gets any worse.