The signs were obvious, we had good warning and yet... there was enough support in the community, to bring Tony Abbott to the Lodge... This from as long ago as 2002
AM Archive - Tuesday, 2 July , 2002 00:00:00
Reporter: Ross Solly
LINDA MOTTRAM: Federal Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Abbott, continues to attract strong criticism after he told an industrial relations conference yesterday that bad bosses, like bad fathers and husbands, should be tolerated because they generally do more good than harm.
Unions say his comments are bizarre and women's groups say they're dangerous.
From Canberra, Ross Solly reports.
ROSS SOLLY: Having already compared himself with Moses, Tony Abbott yesterday handed out this piece of advice for employees.
TONY ABBOTT: If we're honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband. Not withstanding all his or her faults, you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he's employing someone while he is in fact a boss.
ROSS SOLLY: And the gathering at the Industrial Relations Conference was left to draw their own conclusions. Plenty who didn't attend were quick to respond. Labor's Carmen Lawrence.
CARMEN LAWRENCE: I was very upset by the comparison he made with bad fatherhood or being a bad husband. Basically that you put with their faults because on balance you think they're going to do more good than harm.
Well that's not very good advice to someone if they're in a bad relationship, for instance where there's violence involved or abuse involved and Abbott never knows where to draw the line.
ROSS SOLLY: The unions were also not impressed with the comparison. The ACTU's Greg Combet says Minister Abbott has given employers the green light to treat employees as they choose.
GREG COMBET: Tony Abbott is supposed to even handedly look after the interests of employers and employees but now he's saying no matter what an employer does, they're to be forgiven and it's okay.
It's outrageous and he should apologise.
ROSS SOLLY: AM contacted Tony Abbott this morning. He wouldn't be interviewed, saying his comments have been misinterpreted and that he was only referring to the problems associated with tying business up in red tape. He did say sometimes one uses metaphors which are less apt.
Eva Cox, from the Australian Women's Electoral Lobby, certainly believes the comparison was less apt.
EVA COX: I am absolutely appalled. This is not the sort of leadership one would expect from somebody like Tony Abbott, who claims to be a Christian gentleman… in various guises.
You just don't go around saying you can be a bad boss, a bad father and a bad husband, because this seems to sanction it. You know, as long you actually provide some sort of wages and presumably occasionally chuck some money at the little woman. I mean this is not the sort of leadership I expect out of government.
ROSS SOLLY: Eva Cox has joined with Carmen Lawrence and Greg Combet in demanding an apology and a retraction from Minister Abbott.
EVA COX: I think a lot of us have been working, whether it's an area of domestic violence or I've been personally doing some stuff around the workplace, to try and say that you expect people to behave responsibly and civilly in the workplace, particularly those with authority.
You expect bosses not to bully and not to encourage bullying and you expect a reasonably amount of good behaviour. We've been pushing for a long time about the fact that the household has to involve people being civil to each other.
Now here we have one of the major government ministers carrying on like a two-bob watch about the fact that it doesn't really matter as long as you're a husband and as long as you're a boss, you can do pretty well anything you like. I just think that that's appalling.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Eva Cox from the Australian Women's Electoral Lobby, speaking to Ross Solly in Canberra.
