Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

for a government that understands that the workplace relations system is about balance. It is about treating the interests of employers and employees in balance. It is about making sure that there is fairness for all. It is about making sure that there is not industrial disruption that threatens the national interest. That is the approach of the government and that is the approach we took. Consequently, we moved on Saturday afternoon to bring this dispute to an end, and it was at an end by yesterday afternoon, with planes back in the sky—a balanced approach to the interests of employers and employees, always guided by what is in the interests of the national economy and the travelling public.

But what has amazed me in the course of the last few days is that in these circumstances—with Qantas having decided on Saturday to dramatically escalate this dispute, to engage in a lockout of its workforce, to ground planes with no appropriate notice to the travelling public so that tens of thousands of people were stranded away from home, unable to get to work, unable to get back to their loved ones—the Leader of the Opposition has not uttered one word of criticism of Qantas, not one word of criticism of Qantas after it stranded tens of thousands of passengers. We know why that is—well, we only know part of why that is—because the opposition leader's attitude towards industrial relations is to give the employers everything they want every time and smash into the workers. That was what Work Choices was about. What we do not quite know is all of the details about the Leader of the Opposition's interactions with Qantas, because he is now engaged in a cover-up of that. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that it is time he came clean with the Australian public. The tens of thousands of members of the Australian public who were stranded would be interested to know what the Leader of the Opposition knew and when he knew it.

Honourable members interjecting—

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