George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The difference between full-time employment and working as a casual can be enormous. In the resource industry around the Bowen Basin, working as a casual usually means lower wages, inferior conditions and, most importantly, less job security. It is with great concern that I see the decline in full-time employment and the rise in casual employment in mines around my electorate. It is morally wrong for a mining corporation, or any corporation, to employ people on a casual basis, even indirectly through labour hire contractors, to have them work side-by-side with full-time employees doing exactly the same job for exactly the same hours for years and years on end. I have had particular concerns about what is happening in Anglo American's German Creek coalmine near Middlemount.

I have written to the Fair Work Ombudsman as it appears there may be breaches of the Fair Work Act. There are reports of workers being sacked at the same time as their positions, or similar positions, are being advertised by a labour hire company contracted to Anglo American. If any worker believes that this has happened to them, I ask them to contact me because the Fair Work Ombudsman wants to hear from those individuals. If a mine is retrenching their permanent workforce and immediately filling those positions with contract labour, that is a breach of the Fair Work Act and it is illegal. I have written to the CFMEU to ask for their cooperation in providing details to the Fair Work Ombudsman so that if there are breaches of the Fair Work Act they can be dealt with accordingly.

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