MP rules out IR debate

By Paul Pickering
LA TROBE MP Jason Wood has reiterated that he will not participate in a public debate on the Howard Government’s industrial relations reforms, dismissing the invitation from La Trobe’s Your Rights at Work campaign as “an ACTU-Labor stunt.”
Mr Wood has recently come under fire in the Mail’s letter pages for a perceived reluctance to defend his endorsement of the WorkChoices legislation.
Increasingly frustrated by the persistence of the campaign, Mr Wood was compelled to clear the air last week.
“Of course during the (upcoming election) campaign there will be debates, but I’m not going to dance to the ACTU’s tune,” he said.
“There’s no value in (the debate) for me because we’re obviously going to have different opinions on the issue.
“We don’t ask them to come to a Liberal branch meeting.”
La Trobe’s Your Rights at Work community campaign coordinator Katie Hall, however, was keen to downplay the ACTU’s role in the campaign.
“Yes, I work for the ACTU, but this is a community group made up of local people and swinging voters who are concerned about industrial relations laws, not union bosses out to ruin the economy as Mr Wood would have you believe,” she said.
Ms Hall would not accept Mr Wood’s concerns about being ambushed by an unsympathetic audience.
“That’s a cop out,” she said.
“He’s a Member of Parliament who voted for something that has become increasingly controversial and contentious, yet has not explained why he did that and refuses to engage with community.”
It was also revealed last week that a failed email may have been the genesis of a coordinated email campaign aimed at inducing a response from Mr Wood.
In her letter to the editor of the Mail (22 May), Ms Hall claimed that Mr Wood had ignored both her emails to his office asking him to participate in a public debate.
Mr Wood, however, has since provided evidence of a reply sent to Ms Hall within a week of her original email reiterating that he would not participate.
Ms Hall could not account for the misunderstanding, and stated that the email campaign would not have proceeded had she received the initial response.
The debate was fuelled by suggestions that Mr Wood had refused to reply to emails urging him to participate in the debate.
Mr Wood has previously stated that he will not reply to correspondence unless the sender includes their name and address in order to identify them as one of his constituents.
He says that the majority of the 200 emails that he has received did not meet those requirements, therefore no response was made.
While Ms Hall maintains that many of the emails did include the necessary identification, she was reluctant to be bogged down by “splitting hairs”, saying it was now up to Mr Wood to defend his support for the Government’s industrial relations laws.