Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, that is right! I am sure they all want to buy a house in Cairns! But it is not an outrageous sum for FIFO workers.

But everything else the member said was wrong. Like most in the mining industry, the tugboat workers are rostered on swings. They work 28 days on and 28 days off. But their 28 days are not regular nine-to-five hours, Monday to Friday. They work a minimum of 12 hours a day, seven days a week and often in split shifts. In fact, if you do the maths, they work around 39 hours per week every week of the year.

Like most workers, including miners and workers on offshore oil and gas projects and like many of the fly-in fly-out workers in the seat of Canning, they are asking for four weeks leave each year. Their pay claim is for a maximum of 15.5 per cent over four years, or 3.8 per cent—not the 40 per cent claimed by the member for Canning.

I ask the member for Canning to stop demonising these hard-working Western Australians and to realise that the availability of well-paying jobs for hard-working people who are prepared to do the hard yards and to work those long hours is really part of why we support the minerals industry so strongly. Indeed, it is why the community supports it. If you take away those jobs you will take away that support.

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