The Labor Party introduced the Fair Work Act 2009, thus removing the worst excesses of Workchoices, the centrepiece of the Liberal’s attack on worker’s rights during the Howard years.

The Howard Liberal government, in which Tony Abbott was a Minister, introduced Workchoices with NO mandate and without having gone to an election with Workchoices as a policy. It was a secret policy which was implemented once the Howard coalition government got control of the Senate.

The Liberals cannot be allowed the opportunity to attack rights at work again.

Tony Abbott is trying to avoid the IR issue. He says that he won’t change the Fair Work Act. This is not good enough as it is possible to change IR by other means.

Abbott has already said that he will make unions pay for elections conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission and claims that he will do this without changing the FWA.

In addition, when pressed, Abbott refused to rule out a Liberal government intervening in support of employers in cases being heard in Fair Work Australia. He is also on record as saying he will remove unfair dismissal rights of workers in small business and will bring back individual contracts, one of the centrepieces of Workchoices.

The Liberals have proved that they cannot be trusted on IR and should not be trusted now.

Labor went to the last election promising to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and tore introduce access to the IR “umpire”. The Greens, if they hold the balance of power in the next parliament, will be pressing the Labor government to honour their promises on both these issues.