Senator Eric Abetz

Journalist: Overnight Tony Abbott pretty much ruled out WorkChoices coming back. Do you welcome that, that there won't be any individual contracts?

Senator Abetz: WorkChoices is dead buried and cremated. We all know that. Its been well established. The Coalition has learnt its lesson from the 2007 election result and that remains off the agenda.

In relation to individual workplace agreements, Tony Abbott has set out our position and that is it.  

Journalist: Yesterday we had Peter Reith saying that the Coalition should be harder on this. Is he out of step with the Coalition and the Liberal Party do you think?

Senator Abetz: Peter Reith has an excellent record as a Workplace Relations Minister who drove some industrial reform that was of great benefit to our Nation. Having said that, times have moved on. It's been about a decade or so since he was Minister and different scenarios are at play. I welcome his input but at the end of the day it will be the Coalition Members of Parliament that will determine our policy.

Journalist: Now business, they've been calling for a return to individual contracts, especially some retailers saying that it would give them greater flexibility. So are you disappointed that individual contracts aren't going to be a part of the Coalition's policy mix?

Senator Abetz: The important thing that retailers, especially small businesses have been putting to myself and the Coalition, is that they need flexibility. The question is how can you provide flexibility whilst still ensuring that workers are fully protected and that is something that we are taking submissions on? And I believe that some of these issues can be addressed without going back to individual agreements.

Journalist: The dead buried cremated message came out during the election so why did Tony Abbott feel he needed to restate that?

Senator Abetz: Well, Tony Abbott was confronted with a question on the 730 report last night and in those circumstances it is appropriate for him to restate our position. I think for him not to have done so would have led to a situation of him not having ruled out a return to WorkChoices.

Journalist: Do you think that message hasn't gotten through because the questions about WorkChoices keep coming up? He gets cat calls in Parliament a lot on that. Do you think that the message that it's not coming back hasn't gotten through?

Senator Abetz: I think it has got through to a large extent, but with respect, people like you keep raising it at media stops and the Labor Party of course continue to throw it at us. One thing that the Labor Party can't overcome is that we have acknowledged our mistake and have said so to the Australian people and it would be nice if Julia Gillard, for example were to be able to get up and say her Medicare-Gold proposal, which the people rejected, was a mistake. She's never been able to bring herself to say it was a mistake, it was a policy error and that Labor won't go down that track again.

We're prepared to acknowledge our mistakes, level with the Australian people and say we accept your verdict, we made a mistake and we're not going back there.

Journalist: Eric, how far out from the next election would you like to see your workplace policy out in the domain for people to comment on?

Senator Abetz: The difficulty that the Coalition faces of course is that we don't know when the next election is going to be. And that is in the gift of the Prime Minister or indeed, in this Parliament, the Parliament itself. So we don't know but we aren't going to be rushed into a policy position. We want to ensure that we get it right and we will deliver our policy on our timetable and nobody else's.