Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Today, at nine o’clock, there was a rally at EnergyAustralia Stadium, headed up by Gary Kennedy, head of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council. The bottom line of the letter reads: ‘Your rights at work are worth fighting for.’ I have to say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that hypocrisy is something that none of us can withstand, because this same Gary Kennedy, the head of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council, is the same Gary Kennedy who was also a director of the Panthers workers club in Newcastle. Seventeen workers from the Newcastle Panthers club were laid off—17 workers whose rights were not protected by the head of the Trades Hall Council. What is amazing is that all of this occurred prior to Work Choices coming in. In fact, it is disgusting that one of the employees laid off had worked faithfully for the club for 39 years—39 years of effort. When Gary Kennedy, head of the Trades Hall Council, sacked her, he could not even pay the correct retrenchment and entitlement rights.

It goes further. Another person had been there for 11 years. Would Gary Kennedy allow negotiations on his future? No, not at all. Seventeen people were sacked by the head of the Trades Hall Council in Newcastle, yet today at the rally this is the person who stands up and says, ‘Protect the workers’ rights.’ It is supreme hypocrisy. This man will stand up and say one thing and then act in another way. There were no rights for the workers of the workers club. Hypocrisy reigns supreme out of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council.

In the six months since Work Choices was brought in—which was after these workers were sacked by the head of the Trades Hall Council, with no negotiating rights—there have been 250,000 new jobs created. In fact, 184,000 of those are full-time jobs. Retrenchments are now 58 per cent lower than they were when Kim Beazley was the minister responsible for employment. There has been a 16.4 per cent increase in real wages in the last 10 years, compared to a 0.2 per cent decrease in real wages under 13 years of Labor. And what says it all is the $27 per week increase for the lowest paid workers.

So, Mr Deputy Speaker, I say to you: do we look at the actions of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council and Gary Kennedy, or do we look at the track record of the Howard government in bringing unemployment down? In fact, the only thing that has come down has been unemployment. Wages have gone up. Job opportunities have gone up. Apprenticeships have gone up. But unemployment has come down. That is the critical factor.

I note that the member for Batman, a strong unionist, is here. What would he say to Gary Kennedy, the head of the Trades Hall Council, who sacked 17 loyal staff at the workers club in Newcastle? It is not a workers club. In fact, the people who run that—allegedly the workers—do not represent the workers. All they want do is collect the union fees. Today’s rallies are nothing about jobs. They are about shoring up lame duck union officials such as Gary Kennedy, who is a fraud upon society for the fact that he says one thing and then does exactly the opposite. He talks about workers’ rights and then strips them away from the people he is supposed to represent. I notice the member for Shortland is absolutely silent on this, as indeed every other Labor member in the Hunter, state or federal, has sat dead quiet on this. She turns her back.

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