Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I think I am probably more qualified than anyone in this parliament to talk on this particular MPI. Not one of the people opposite has worked in the areas that I have worked in. I started life as a manual cane cutter and a member of the AWU Queensland. One of the problems we have with those opposite is that they are a single species. You have all the union apparatchiks and the shop stewards; you do not have any breadth of thinking whatsoever on the opposition benches.

A few of us on this side have got our hands dirty. I could certainly name as examples the member for Grey and, I dare say, the member for Hume and others who have worked out there in the workforce and understand what the workforce is all about. We have had the flexibility to go out and get better wages. In those days we were the vanguard of aspirational Australia, because we wanted to succeed. As I said, I have cut cane by hand. I have also picked up potatoes. I have been a contractor, a farmer and a publican. As a farmer and a publican, I employed people. So I think I know, right across the board, what employment, wages and work are about. I have not seen anyone on the other side who comes near that.

The problem is that most of those opposite have never worked in the workforce. They do not know what it is about and they have no understanding of what the workers think. I will give you a particular instance, from my days as a cane cutter. In 1959, we were earning about £100 a fortnight. To put that in perspective, that was five times the award rate. In about 1961 there was a good price in sugar and for some unknown reason the union officials said, ‘We want a productivity loading, because the farmers are making too much money.’ They did not come to the cane cutters and ask, ‘Do you want to apply for an increase in your wages?’ They just decided that they were going to go out on strike. A number of us said, ‘No. We are not going to do that.’ But they took us out anyway for a fortnight for a productivity loading. We lost £100 in that fortnight—one-tenth of the cost of a Holden car in those days.

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