Ms JULIE BISHOP (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (1:23 PM) —Legislation has the potential to impact on the everyday lives of Australians. I am amazed that the Deputy Prime Minister seeks to ridicule the evidence given before a Senate inquiry. She seeks to ridicule the evidence given before a Senate inquiry as to the complexity and the flawed nature of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 and she seeks to ridicule Professor Andrew Stewart, whose evidence was:

I would suggest that Professor Stewart’s concerns be treated with respect. The premise upon which this bill is based—that is, the abolition of Australian workplace agreements—is in fact false. That is not what this bill does. The Labor Party have led the public to believe that individual statutory agreements will no longer exist in workplaces in Australia—certainly not beyond 2010. We all remember the statements in their document of April 2007—that is, the document of the now Deputy Prime Minister before the now Prime Minister had to come in and pull her into line. This document said on page 3:

That is, in fact, not the case. Time after time, the Prime Minister, the then Leader of the Opposition, and the Deputy Prime Minister, the then shadow minister for workplace relations, said, for example:

Ms Gillard —Hear, hear! Exactly right.

Ms JULIE BISHOP —That is not correct. They went on to say:

The now Deputy Prime Minister said on 2 May 2007:

The Prime Minister, when he was the Leader of the Opposition, said statutory AWAs were, for Labor, ‘simply unacceptable’. He later went on to say:

The Australian public would be able to draw from that that there will be no individual agreements in workplaces across Australia beyond 2010 or, as the Policy implementation plan said, that 31 December 2012 would be the ‘last possible expiry date for all Work Choices AWAs’. The public thought that that meant that Labor’s policy was there would be no individual statutory agreements beyond 2010 or, most certainly, beyond 2012. But, in fact, evidence provided to the Senate inquiry has revealed that individual statutory agreements can continue indefinitely where the employer or the employee chooses not to terminate the agreement. These arrangements can continue indefinitely for AWAs and for Labor’s interim AWAs, the ITEAs. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were at it again today in the House, refusing to acknowledge that, at the nominal expiry date of an individual statutory agreement—whether it is an AWA or one of Labor’s new interim AWAs—that agreement can continue. If the employee and the employer do not seek to terminate or to renegotiate it, it continues indefinitely—beyond 2010, beyond 2012 and into the future. The evidence that we got from an Acting Associate Secretary, Mr Pratt, of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, should be highlighted to this House. Mr Pratt said:

The question was put to him:

(Time expired)