Mr BEAZLEY (Leader of the Opposition) (2:55 PM) —After all that dribbling and spitting, I seek leave to move:

Leave not granted.

Mr BEAZLEY —I move that so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of Opposition moving—on these cowards—immediately—

The SPEAKER —Order! The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw.

Mr BEAZLEY —I withdraw that. I move:

Twice in this week the opposition has moved a censure motion against the government related to aspects of their industrial relations bills not yet before the House. The propaganda is out but not the bills. The propaganda is out—the soft soap is out—but not the knife. The knife remains sheathed for the course of the next couple of weeks. Twice in this House these so-called brave men—these folk full of ticker!—have squibbed a censure debate. The Prime Minister, who regards the industrial relations legislation as his leitmotiv and finest hour, has squibbed participation in the debate. I think that speaks volumes to the Australian people.

Fairness, which has been added as an afterthought in these documents, is not the hallmark of this government. We say the system needs to be fair. The churches say the system needs to be fair. Australians want the system to be fair. Even the government’s own advertising gurus say the system should be fair. So what does the government do? Instead of putting fairness into the system, it puts ‘fairness’ into its slogan. That is where fairness ends. Instead of just pulping the first of its booklets, at vast public expense, it should pulp the bill.

This deceit typifies the government’s whole approach to industrial relations: soft soap sell on the outside; a twist of the knife on the inside. A sum of $100 million of taxpayers’ money to sell the Australian public a wages cut. I will tell you one of the things that the Australian people know that I stand for and that my party stands for: the ordinary Australian who, for the last 9½ years, has been traduced by a political party that has said one thing in an election campaign and done another thing after it. It said it would never, ever do the GST—

Mr Ticehurst —I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a speech. This has nothing to do with the censure motion; this is a re-run of the speech he was going to do yesterday.

The SPEAKER —In calling the Leader of the Opposition I remind him that this is a motion to suspend standing orders and he should refer to that as well.

Mr BEAZLEY —The whole point is that, if the government had the courage to confront a censure motion, it would be possible for them to lay out a defence of what it is they are up to. The Prime Minister loves the opportunity for reply in question time and to sit in coward’s castle and abuse us and all that we do on this side of House. But when the moment comes for them to face the music, and there is a fair and even-handed debate in the place, they cut and run. That is the form of the government, and we are seeing that form here again. The unfortunate thing is that we are not the people who are being cut and run on in this case. The people who are being run over are the ordinary Australians, who will be shattered by the passage, ultimately, of this legislation.

The reason why we have to discuss this matter in this place and why this motion to suspend standing orders ought to be carried is that these documents bear some very close examination indeed. Clearly these documents were put out and printed with one set of intentions in mind, and then they were got together to do two things: firstly, to soft-soap the cover of it and, secondly, to start to manoeuvre for the government a position where their words had enough wriggle in them to cover what their real intentions were. So all of a sudden we had dumped into the middle of the title the word ‘fairer’. That is the soft line. The more interesting thing is what then happened to other sets of words. In the old document, the document that the public will never see, one particular chapter—in fact the most important of the chapters in it—begins: ‘Your existing award conditions protected by law.’ Out of that document are those words and inside instead is ‘WorkChoices and awards.’ Out goes ‘Your existing award conditions protected by law’ and in comes ‘WorkChoices and awards.’ In the old document one of the subheadings in this chapter is ‘Preserving key award conditions.’ In the document to be released it becomes ‘Protecting award conditions.’ The word is softened immediately.

In the old document, with its lovely little ‘protected by law’ stamp over it, is ‘Terms and conditions and existing agreements will be protected’—so a nice little ‘protected by law’ stamp over it. In the to be released document—nothing. There is nothing at all; it is gone. The ‘protected by law’ is gone. Then in the old document you have the heading ‘Protected award conditions.’ In the document to be released it becomes ‘Protecting award conditions in bargaining.’ Two totally different concepts. What this government has determined to do is to rip those awards from underneath Australian workers. Nothing grates on our nerves more on this side of the House—and it is one of the reasons why we want an open debate and a censure motion on this—than to see some of the wealthiest people in this country standing before the dispatch box, mocking the conditions of some of the poorest, ordinary Australians—people who are shop assistants, not terribly powerful, and rural workers, desperately trying to get the resources together to support their families. These are people whose livelihood is less than the expense claims of the average Australian cabinet minister—and because, for their pitiful bike, horse or whatever, they are entitled to a $5 payment, they get mocked in this place.

The ordinary Australian does not reside anywhere in the heart of the average Liberal or National Party member. They despise ordinary Australians, and they now want to brutalise them. The simple fact of the matter is that this entire panoply, facade, volume of words out there in the public conceals one essential and absolutely concrete purpose—that is, the intention of the government is to introduce a set of laws that will cut people’s wages. That is the point. They want to exercise downward pressure on wages at a time when the cost of living on so many fronts is rising quite dramatically. Their intention here particularly applies to those who find themselves less able to protect themselves in the work force, which happens to include a majority of the work force: young people entering it, women who are casuals, members of the work force who are skilled and semiskilled—few of whom are unionised. It is an odd thing about this debate: the unions are in fact standing, in the main, for non-unionised Australians—few of whom are protected by unions but all of whom are protected by the existence of an Industrial Relations Commission and a set of awards and a set of award conditions.

Finally, we have got to debate these censure motions and have them seriously considered in this place because the intention on the part of the government has to be exposed in detail so that the public of this country understand what it is they are up to, because in the last election campaign they saw none of it. The government did not have the courage or the fortitude to go into the last election campaign telling the Australian people what they would do. But they have fraudulently spent $100 million worth of public funds to try to conceal from the public what it is they intend to do. This censure motion must now be debated. (Time expired)

The SPEAKER —Is the motion seconded?

Mr Stephen Smith —I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.