Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

You won on the floor. It was an empiric victory that Don had to have, and then prove later that he could happily stand aside and hand it over to Penny.

But I digress. Regarding the bill the member for Wakefield has spoken on—the Fair Entitlements Guarantee Bill 2012—I support the member for Farrer in saying that we will be moving a second reading amendment, which I will refer to later. There were many points on which I agree with the member for Wakefield, particularly relating to the actions some companies take towards the end, when they are clearly heading in the direction of not being able to survive. I think that has been shameful at times in our history.

I refer to a good example in late 2006 where a certain components company based in Sydney, with some South Australian ownership, treated their workers in a terrible way—which I think even today, interestingly, would still be a difficult issue for any government to deal with if an employer took such an attitude towards a certain company. I remember that a certain Sydney talkback host jumped on that issue and made great hay with it. But, truth be told, when an employer wants to act in that manner, it can treat people terribly. I think that is a very good point that the member makes. Equally, there are times when employers and directors make bad decisions or deliberately make decisions which seek to unfairly treat their workers. That is why we need protections in law in this country: to ensure that people are not unfairly treated. We do need a safety net, and we have always supported—I have always supported—the need for a strong safety net of entitlements for people in the workplace.

But what the member for Wakefield did not refer to, of course, is that there are times when organised labour and workers' representatives also make mistakes and also push too far in making companies pay for entitlements which are clearly beyond the capacity of certain companies to pay for into the future. They are unsustainable, and that equally leads to the unfortunate circumstances where companies cannot continue to operate and therefore go out of business. You have to wonder sometimes whether cutting your own throat is a good idea, and that certainly has been the case with many companies.

Equally, right now, today, as we speak, there are companies—including one big company that operates in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, in the member for Wakefield's electorate—who have agreed to arrangements which are very generous. When those companies are the beneficiaries of significant taxpayer support in the first place, you have to wonder whether these companies and these workers—

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