Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hate to correct my opponent, but you do not bleed through eyes at all—there is no such thing, like much of your argument. I would have loved to see you build anything in Defence while in government, but that did not happen. But let's go to further misrepresentation, and I am glad that we have you in this chamber, Mr Speaker. What we saw today was a terrible misuse of young people by the leader of the Opposition, who trotted out two vulnerable workers, who, according to him, had been harmed and needed to be protected. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all we had a worker—the Labor changes will not protect him because he works in small business. More concerning, the Leader of the Opposition brought forward a worker from my electorate of Bowman and referred to this person as 'vulnerable' and 'desperately needing Labor's protection'. Where this individual works—and this will be news to the chamber—the workers are fully united behind the management. It is a very effective sports club with a strong spirit and there is absolutely not one sinew or moment of misuse or poor treatment of workers.

Yes, there is one unhappy worker, but that is not the same thing. Coelho said that:

Anything that happens once will never happen again. Anything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

We have one or two examples in every workplace of unsatisfactory relationships, but let's be honest about what happened here in the Capalaba Sports Club. This was an arrangement for 38 hospitality staff and a new wage agreement was introduced from interstate. The wage agreement had actually been approved by Fair Work Australia the previous year. It was not just approved by some disreputable commissioner; this was approved by a commissioner of Fair Work Australia who was the boss of Unions NSW. That is right—it was a Labor-approved commissioner who approved the agreement that was brought to this club where this young worker, who was trotted out by the Leader of the Opposition today, came from. There was every punctuation mark of correct approach in introducing that new system, with appropriate emails, messages, signs, meetings. All of that was followed to the letter. The claim that this person was sacked on the spot has never been substantiated, but there is a mountain of evidence to show that procedures were followed appropriately.

About this agreement that was approved by Unions NSW, where case studies were introduced—

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