Senator Eric Abetz

“It’s all very well for Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard to ‘Huff and Puff’, urging striking Woodside Petroleum workers to end their strike action in Western Australia in defiance of a order to return to work, but the Minister has the power to step in and stop this illegal strike action and, still, she refuses to do so.”

“It’s time Ms Gillard explained to the Australian people why it is that she is prepared to sit back and do nothing while Woodside’s 12 billion dollar gas project at Karratha is in jeopardy due to the unreasonable demands by the unions,” according to Shadow Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, Senator Eric Abetz.

“Why is it that, on the one hand, Ms Gillard is very quick out of the blocks to threaten to penalise school teachers who were planning a day of protest regarding Labor’s ‘My School’ website and yet, on the other hand, she is not prepared to directly intervene in a dispute that threatens the Australian economy?”

“The Woodside strike threatens to jeopardise Australia’s international contracts and could result in irreparable damage to our national interests and the Minister must intervene immediately as a matter of the utmost urgency,” says Senator Abetz.

“The Minister has the power to bring this issue to a head but she won’t because she knows that this will only highlight the inadequacies of Labor’s Fair Work Australia which has dismally failed in its attempts to order an end to the union strike action.”

“Minister Gillard’s failure to step up to the plate and resolve this damaging dispute is a classic example of Rudd Labor ‘fiddling while Rome burns’.”