Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

40 per cent more—and reduce their on-time to 4½ months. That sort of workplace is not sustainable. The reality of what this ambit claim is in relation to this visa is that if somebody wants to come to this country and operate without coming into our migration zone they should be allowed to be employed by that company. Just put the reverse: if we go and do a fair bit of work in the Middle East in both the oil and gas sectors off Saudi or off the Emirates and we do not go ashore in one of those countries, they do not have unions up there but do we have to belong to their regime. Do we have to get a visa to enter? We do not. You go straight to the job site. This is what we are talking about, so this is sensible legislation.

The Labor Party will oppose it all the way. I point out again, and confirm, that this is no more than a power grab by the unions and the Labor Party in this place looking after their union mates. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, went to Western Australia before the last federal election. He said one thing in Western Australia and something else over here. What he said in Western Australia was: 'I want to see unions more like the MUA, because they are more militant. I want to see them raise their head and take on people in an aggressive way.' I will bring the cuttings in next time I speak on one of these bills and table them because I think they are very interesting reading. Yet when he comes back over this side of the country he says, 'No, no, we don't want that sort of militant action from unions,' but he has got the CFMEU, a militant union, and the MUA, a militant union, trying to impose themselves.

This legislation clearly fixes up the mess that the Labor Party would have taken us into—and thank goodness that was rushed through and not proclaimed properly. As a result we are going to make sure that by 1 July this year this sort of legislation is improved so that it does not hurt the Australian resources sector and that it is actually in the best interests of our productivity and the workers in the north-west, not the union bosses in the north-west and their beneficiaries here in Canberra, the members of the Labor Party.

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