Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the amendments but I want to make a comment on the debate so far on this substantive bill before the House. I have to say there is a lot of rhetoric. The reason that this matter has been brought forward is not that people have lost money; they knew that was going to occur. They knew that when the legislation was passed. The reason this is coming before us is the polls. This mob opposite are going to do anything, spend as much as it takes, to get them across the line at the next election. I would like to put a bit of reality into this debate if I could.

Back in September of last year, in a question without notice, I raised with the Prime Minister the situation faced by employees of Lipa Pharmaceuticals in my electorate, a major pharmaceutical company that employs about 300 people in Minto. I asked him if he was aware that these people were on a collective agreement but had been presented with an Australian workplace agreement that sought to cut weekend penalty rates, cut public holiday pay, remove protected award conditions and also allow the employer the unilateral ability to change shift and rostering arrangements with no increase in pay—and that agreement would last for five years. Understandably, the Prime Minister probably thought, ‘Well, I can’t trust these Labor members because they’ll tell me anything,’ so he did not want to answer. So I popped up and I gave him a copy of the certified agreement, which was still current, and the AWA. I tried to get an answer from the Prime Minister as to why someone would actually sign this when they still had an agreement, one that still had time to run, yet they had been asked to sign an AWA. By the way, the employee who came to see me about that made it very clear why that was the case. He said, ‘They put it to me that if I didn’t sign it there were plenty of other people who would.’

These are not just constituents out there. They are not just voters we are trying to woo before the next election. These are people I go to the football with on weekends. My kids go to school with their kids. I have been in that area for 30 years, and these are families that have grown up there. They are concerned about Lipa Pharmaceuticals. They are not in trades which are in demand in the energy industry; they are not going to leave this job and go to a mine. These people need the jobs that they have. They are low-skilled workers; they know that they are not in much of a position to bargain. And I know for a fact that there is no union on that site—but there are 300 people so perhaps there should be. But they were put in the position where they either signed the contract or they did not have a job.

Reynaldo Cortez is one of those people. He has got five kids; his wife stays home and minds them. He signed the agreement, but when he came to my office to talk about it he was in tears. He said to me, and this was actually reported in the local newspaper: ‘I’ve got five kids and my wife takes care of my kids.’ He said that, when confronted with the agreement: ‘I felt sick. I couldn’t sleep because of what was going on. I didn’t like to sign it, but what could I do?’ I have now had in excess of 20 people who work for that company come to visit my office. Invariably, the arrangement is that they meet me on a weekend because they do not want to be seen coming to the office of Chris Hayes. Because I do actually raise these things, they fear that if they are seen coming to my office they will get the sack.

Do not forget, Mr Deputy Speaker, that when all of this fairness stuff comes into play this employer does not actually have to give them a reason for dismissal. It can be just ‘operational reasons’. These are not lawyers. They certainly do not have the ability to go and pay for a lawyer. As I said, they are not on a unionised site. They are very concerned for themselves and their families. They are concerned for their welfare. That man who came to see me lost $200 a week. That was in the documentation I provided to the Prime Minister. I know that, when the former minister, Mr Andrews, who is also sitting at the table, visited my electorate and this was raised with him when he was out at Ingleburn, he took the easy line and said: ‘Well, this is sub judice. This is subject to an investigation.’ Let me tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, there has never been—(Time expired)

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