Senator Eric Abetz

The organizers of this Conference are to be congratulated for the opportunity afforded to us to undertake a stock take of the Fair Work regime. 

I note that no-one from the Government will be contributing - it seems that Ms Gillard is most anxious to talk about the non-existent/dead WorkChoices rather than an analysis of her own system which bears a lot of Labor's and her own personal iconic hallmarks - rushed and the victim of overpromising and under delivering. 

And let's not forget the promise 

"No worker will be worse off". 10's of 100's of workers are worse off! And to combat this & we see the ACTU embarking on a wasteful campaign against the dead WorkChoices. 

I have a simple message for Ms Gillard and the ACTU - Australians and Australian workers are not interested in 2007 but in 2010 and beyond. 

And desperate attempts to run a scare campaign against WorkChoices won't alleviate the plight of workers in 2010 or & over the legacy of broken promises. 

Australian workers are interested in our plans for the future, not the mistakes of the past.

It's a delight to be with you and thanks for the invitation. 

Brad's kind invitation included the foreboding observation that amongst other things the attendance of the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations "has always been a highlight of the conference." 

I trust that Brad can write the same for the introduction to the 2011 conference. By then I hope my description will have been shortened with the important removal of the frustrating word "shadow"! 

I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm addressing a group of fellow industrial relations "tragics" - whom I acknowledge from Judges to an Attorney-General, a Minister to elected officials to hired guns and the world of academia. 

Although I note you may be more "tragic" than me in that you eat, breathe and live workplace relations all day, every day, whereas I get some light relief through question time talking matters economic and other general issues in the broader public policy arena. 

Your individual specialist knowledge is undoubtedly better than mine - so please go easy!

Senator Abetz :Trust is the key currency of politics, and unless you can be trusted to honour that to which you've committed to do, then, I've got to say, you're not going to obtain the enduring respect of the Australian people.

Those prophetic words were spoken by no other than the Labor leader himself on 29 February 2008, some two years ago. Put simply, the Australian people no longer trust Labor, because Labor has not honoured the people of Australia by keeping its promises. Indeed, Labor discards its solemn promises as easily as we discard our used tissues: it spares them not another thought.

The list of broken promises, this shameful record, must surely be vying for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Who else could recklessly make so many inflated promises inflated both in number and actual size and then so dismissively walk away from them other than Labor, led by the promise-making, promise-breaking duo of Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard and, might I add, every single Labor member and senator in this place?

It is an honour to have been invited to share ANZAC Day with you. It seems very appropriate to celebrate ANZAC Day on Flinders Island, which was largely built on the Soldier Settlement Programme after World War II – so poignantly described in Bob Mainwaring’s book the Gold Coast Settlers noting that Bob himself was a soldier settler and a former warden of Flinders Island.

A few years ago when I became Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, I nearly drowned in a sea of acronyms. I found Defence had a language all of its own.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning.

Can I acknowledge Stephen Smith, members of AIG, stakeholders, and fellow workplace relations tragics.

In any discussion of matters workplace relations it is always instructive to remind oneself that issues workplace relations straddle both the social and economic areas of public policy.