Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is pretty shocking when a campaign is started because a person is sacked for being an Australian. That has become a campaign, and many workers are now saying that has been their circumstance and their experience. It is not just our shipbuilders, our seafarers, our young hospitality workers or people who work in tourism or in food processing; it is also our cleaners. What I want to highlight today is how many Australians who are simply being sacked for being an Australian, the diverse range of industries in which they work and how their wages and conditions are being undercut.

It is not a straight-up, straight-down 'You have an accent; you don't; you're sacked.' It is the nature of how contracting industries work; it is the nature of how our visa system works; it is the nature of how key manufacturing contracts are going overseas and it is the nature of how our local seafarers are losing jobs to overseas labour.

The first case is Victor. Today the campaign 'I stand with Victor' started. He is a cleaner who works at Melbourne Airport. He has worked at Melbourne Airport for 15 years. He is an Australian. He does not work directly for Melbourne Airport; they outsourced the contract many years ago. He works for their current contractor, Assetlink. Prior to that, he worked for the cleaning contractor ISS. Victor found out last week that the new cleaning contractor, IKON—the third in four years—was not going to offer him and 20 other employees a job. Victor is one of the nicest, most hardworking and humble guys you will ever meet. He came to this country as a refugee, and he is so proud to be an Australian. He does not mind that he works in cleaning. He has worked hard to support his family, and his children have gone on to university and have great careers. But here he is in his middle age, he has not minded working in cleaning, he has worked hard and he is now being dumped by IKON.

Technically, under the law, there is nothing that we can do to ensure that Victor keeps his job. It is a situation of a change of contract. But who is IKON cleaning for, and why would they not want to pick up a cleaner who has 15 years' experience at Melbourne Airport, who knows the place inside-out and back-to-front and who has never once received a warning or a show cause about his performance?

IKON is a cleaning company based in Melbourne that is known for using subcontractors. Rather than employing their own cleaners, they use subcontractors who have a range of international students working for them. There have been cases of underpayments in relation to the subcontractors that IKON uses. A number of these cases are being investigated. It sounds very similar to the cases of 7-Eleven workers and some of the cleaners at Myer and Crown casino, with principal contractors subcontracting out to international students, who may not know what their rights are, who are being forced to get ABNs and then have their wages undercut.

Victor is an Australian who has, quite possibly, lost his job to an international student who may not be paid the right wages and conditions. It is up to the client, Melbourne Airport, to step in. I call on Melbourne Airport to step in, acknowledge Victor's hard work and make sure that he gets a start with a new contractor.

We then have our shipbuilders and seafarers, who again this week have their jobs embassy out the front of this building. They are people who have lost their jobs under this government's watch. This government has not taken the case of our seafarers seriously. We are one of the only OECD countries that does not have its own domestic shipping industry. We have outsourced it to overseas labour. We hear case after case of Australian workers being told: 'You're sacked. You'll be replaced by a foreign crew.' Some of these crews are being paid as little as $2 a day. Because of the recent campaigns around this issue, one of the ships now pays its workforce $2 an hour. They have gone from $2 a day to $2 an hour. It is impossible to say to these workers, 'You've simply priced yourself out of a job.' There is no way any Australian can live in this country on $2 a day. We as a country need to stand up and say that these people are in Australian jobs and therefore should be paid Australian wages. They are, after all, doing shipping on our coastal waters. They are transporting from Brisbane to Gladstone. They are transporting from Portland to other parts of Australia. These are jobs that, like our roads, should be cast as Australian jobs and therefore paid Australian wages.

Sitting next to me on chamber duty is the member for Gellibrand, who under this government has time and again seen defence contracts lost because the government have dragged their feet on signing them. Hundreds of workers in Melbourne have lost their jobs. Shipyards have closed. For the government to release a big, fancy, new defence white paper but not make a commitment to those workers in Victoria is disappointing; not to make a commitment on subs is disappointing. More Australian jobs are at risk of being lost if that contract, as the former Prime Minister wishes, goes to Japan. It will be more jobs lost and more Australians being sacked.

Then we have what is happening in our tourism industry and our meatworks industry, where overseas backpackers—people who are here on 417 visas or 462 visas—are taking the jobs of local young people. The meatworks industry argue that young Australians do not want to work in meatworks. That is not true at DON-KRC in my electorate, where I have had countless young people say that they did not get their summer job this year at DON-KRC, affectionately known in Castlemaine as 'the Baco'. They lost their jobs to backpackers. Why? The collective agreement at the site, at the time, was that casual workers were paid $5 an hour more than people who worked for a subcontractor on the award. So the company turned round and said to the casual workers, 'You have a choice: either you work for the subcontractor and take a $5 pay cut or we will use subcontractors.' The company said that they would save $4 an hour, the worker would lose $5 an hour, and the extra dollar would go to the subcontractor. That is what is happening in some of Australia's workplaces: more Australians sacked because of the use of backpackers, via a subcontractor, in some of our biggest meat- and food-processing industries. It is also happening in tourism. In cities like Cairns and Townsville, where there is no shortage of young people looking for work, they are missing out on jobs in their local cafes and bars to people who are here on temporary backpacker visas.

Yes, we want people to come here for a cultural exchange. Yes, we want people to enjoy and spend their dollars here in Australia. But we need to question a visa system that allows a large number of backpackers to come here basically to be a cheaper labour source and take the jobs of Australians. That is what is happening at DON-KRC, that is what is happening in parts of tourism, and that is what this government is not doing enough to stop. There has been no proposal by this government to really tackle the issue of international worker exploitation that is going on in our workplaces.

This government has dragged its feet on any significant reforms to ensure that locals get offered local jobs first. This government does not even want to acknowledge that there is a problem in the contracting industry when a cleaner like Victor can be sacked and replaced with a subcontracted international student who is being paid less. This government has not even gone downstairs and spoken to the workers on the lawns in front of Parliament House—the seafarers and the shipbuilders who have lost their jobs on this government's watch. This government does not have a jobs plan. They have a lot of fancy papers, they have a lot of rhetoric and they have a lot of lecturing in question time, but they are not standing up for Australian workers. It is a pretty sad day when you have to stand here and say that you hear too often, 'I was sacked for being an Australian.' That is not xenophobia; that is the reality, because this government is not doing enough to stand up for Australian workers.

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