Minister’s Madness Reaches Dizzy New Heights Craig Emerson - Shadow Minister for Workplace Relations, Shadow Minister for the Public Service

Media Statement - 15 July 2004

Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews has outdone himself with today’s absurd press release, in which he claims that the Labor Party is taking industrial action at a car component plant in Melbourne.

The Minister is insulting the intelligence of the press gallery and corporate Australia with the constant stream of nonsense emanating from the propaganda machine headed by his staffer, Ian Hanke.  The Minister should check this rubbish before allowing it to be released publicly.

For the Minister’s information, employees take industrial action, political parties don’t.

Before seeing the Minister’s press release, I had made no public statements about the Forgecast dispute and have not visited the site. 

Now that the matter has been brought to my attention, it does highlight the problems with the Howard Government’s employee entitlements scheme.

Workers would not have to be concerned about their entitlements if they were 100 per cent covered. Labor’s policy is to extend 100 per cent protection of entitlements to all Australian employees.

Under the Howard Government, the only employees to have had 100 per cent of their entitlements covered were those employed by John Howard’s brother, Stan, at his failed National Textiles company.