For a second day in a row, Collins looked like a wildebeest or antelope crossing a river where Labor knew she was outnumbered by crocodiles and her survival depended on swimming like Johnny Weissmuller and casting a hapless shaman into her wake.
And, for the second day in a row, the parliamentary spotlight fell on the Albanese government’s push to get its contentious industrial relations laws through before Christmas and exposed complexity, uncertainty and dangerous haste involved in the biggest changes since the 1970s.
It’s so haphazard and rushed that one teal independent, Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel, who voted to pass the changes through the House of Representatives, is having second thoughts and wants even more changes.
Small business is now the focus of the industrial relations bill.
On Tuesday, Collins was asked two questions: How much would a small business have to pay to be in multi-party bargaining and how many would be involved?
She couldn’t answer either after failing on Monday to be able to name just one of the 2.4 million small businesses that supported the industrial relations changes.
Collins at least had some numbers – 90 per cent of all Australian businesses would be exempt and there were millions of dollars in grants.
It was an improvement on Monday’s question time but haphazard haste fed the Coalition crocodiles who had the answer to the cost to small businesses of between $14,638 and $75,148 and the Department of Employment’s own (incorrect) reference to basis for the cost being a consultant who claimed to be a “shaman to strategists, psychic to sales reps, healers to home makers and a Buddhist to businessmen”.
Collins tried to reach the far side of the river by promoting good things for small business as Workplace Relations Minister and Leader of the House Tony Burke tried to distract the Coalition and deflect the public gaze. But the key questions remained unanswered, even as the balance-of-power independents in the Senate demanded more changes and wrung extra Senate sitting days from the government for even more industrial relations debate.
This is the principal political and parliamentary problem for Labor: each day the industrial relations legislation drags on is one more day of ragged government.
As Anthony Albanese said on Monday, what happens in parliament matters because “it decides the future of our nation”.
The future of industrial relations is being decided now.
More Coverage
Uneven fight: Can this green banker win against Trump?
It’s the most uneven match up. Canada is betting it all on a former central banker with almost no political experience to take on Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Campaign from the centre delivers third term to WA Labor
It is often lost to modern media that Western Australia is, historically, a conservative state, so it’s important to ask how WA Labor has managed to dominate the political landscape so comprehensively.
For the second day in a row, Small Business Minister Julie Collins has failed to answer two key questions about how many small businesses will be drawn into proposed wage bargaining and how much it would cost.