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

It will not surprise anybody in this House that I rise to speak against this ridiculous bill that is before us. It is ridiculous for a number of reasons. It also shows how hypocritical this government is. This is a government that is saying that 3,000 agreements that have been struck need to be renegotiated within nine months. Agreements struck and signed off by Fair Work—3,000 of them—need to be renegotiated by August this year.

The same government have failed to enter into collective agreements and renegotiate with their own workforce. Tens of thousands of public servants have not had an agreement in place for over three years, yet they are saying to the construction industry, who have gotten on with their job and struck employer and employee agreements in their workplaces: 'Sorry, we don't like some of your clauses, so go back and do it again and do it within nine months. If you don't, you cannot get federal government work.' This is a government that is so heavy-handed with the construction industry it is trying to restrict any possible collective bargaining or freedom that exists. Those opposite who are throwing stones at the construction industry should really look at their efforts in enterprise bargaining and reflect on that for a moment before forcing the construction industry down this chaotic path.

The bill that is before us today is to amend their own act by basically saying companies who have collective agreements that are not code compliant have to be renegotiated in the next nine months. Whilst they can tender for work they cannot enter into contracts. What kind of ridiculous clause is that? Put the hard work in, do the paperwork and tender, but then if you get it they say you cannot sign the contract until you have renegotiated the agreement. You opposite are bullying the construction industry by doing that, you are bullying the workers by doing that and you are bullying the construction companies. Some of these companies are not big companies. Some of these companies are small-to-medium companies that are doing work in regional areas. There are companies like Fairbrother in Tasmania, who have been doing work on the UTAS housing project. They have clauses in their agreement with their workers which would now be restricted because of this code.

There are clauses about apprenticeship ratios. What kind of government wants to strike out apprenticeship ratio agreements in their agreements? What kind of government wants to discriminate and exclude apprenticeships? We have some companies in this country that have sat down with their existing workforce and said, 'Let's work together to ensure that we have another generation of workers in the construction industry' and they have agreed to apprenticeship ratios. They exist in agreements and the construction industry is one of the only industries that we have left in this country with successful apprenticeship programs. Yet this government is saying that there is now something wrong with having that and they are restricting that from being in agreements.

It is not the only clause that this government is saying is now noncompliant and needs to be struck out and renegotiated. This government also has a problem with having within agreements words around making sure every person who works on a site has the right visa and that there are compliance checks. We have heard time and time again in the media about problems with visa workers in the construction industry. People are being employed on construction sites—some of the most dangerous workplaces in Australia—who do not have the right training, do not have the proper safety standards and do not have the proper visas. Yet this government is saying that when a workforce and the employer want to be proactive about it and put it into their agreement it is now not allowed.

Let us just reflect for a moment on some of the quite tragic cases we have had of temporary visa workers working on Australian construction sites and what happens when we do not have an agreement like this in place to do the double-checking and the due diligence to make sure that these workers are safe. We have had the deaths of backpackers in Perth. Two Irish backpackers were crushed, and then a woman—a German backpacker—quite tragically fell to her death because she had taken her harness off. This government do not care about that. They do not care about workplace health and safety, they do not care about workers' safety and they do not care about the migrant temporary workers in these workplaces. They want to make it really hard for an employer who has put a clause in their agreement that says there will be compulsory visa checks.

This is another clause they have a problem with: visas workers redundancies and making sure that local workers have priority. This government, through all their rhetoric and bravado in question time, says: 'We are going to stand up for Australian workers and Australian jobs. We want to see Australians employed.' Yet when a construction agreement has a clause that says that locals will be retained and that casual workers and visa workers are off first, this government is now saying that that should be prohibited. It is now barred under this government if an employer and employees sit down and say, 'If there's a downturn in work we will take away the labour hire and the overseas visa workers first so that the local workers keep their jobs.' That is a clause that every Australian worker would love to have in their agreement. That is a clause that meat workers would like to have, that Parmalat workers would like to have, that food processing workers would like to have, that cleaners would like to have. I cannot think of an industry that would not want to see that kind of clause in their agreement, but, because the construction industry has been sensible and wants to retain a skilled local workforce, the government seek to punish it for getting on with the job of negotiating an agreement so we can continue the construction boom.

The government have a serious problem when it comes to respecting the people who work in the construction industry. As I have mentioned, the government say they will prohibit any clause in relation to apprenticeships and ratios. Why would you target young people in that way? The government also say that another prohibited clause under their code is the opportunity for local manufacturing. Again, that completely flies in the face of all of their rhetoric. They say that clauses which prioritise protective clothing that, wherever possible, is made in Australia are prohibited content and should not be allowed in an agreement. So, when you have construction workers saying to their employer, 'It's not just about us having good secure jobs; we want you to maximise buying equipment and clothing from Australian manufacturers to support another industry,' the government is saying, 'No, that's prohibited content. You can't have that in an agreement and, if you do, you cannot tender for government work.' For all of their ranting and rhetoric about standing up for Australian manufacturing, what they are doing in the ABCC and in this bill by bringing forward the code is saying to a whole bunch of workers, when they have done the right thing to support workers in another industry, 'No, you cannot have a clause in an agreement that talks about prioritising Australian manufactured goods and, in particular, uniforms.'

Another problem that the government have in another restrictive clause under this agreement is asbestos awareness training. We have already had case after case coming up about asbestos being found in Australian workplaces and, because safety officers and workers have spoken out and said there is asbestos, we have been able to catch it in some cases. Where we have non-union workplaces or where we do not have skilled up safety reps, I fear how much asbestos may be in building sites and workplaces. I fear that because we know it is coming in. The government is lax on borders and they are letting asbestos product come in to be used on our building sites—they have not stopped it at the borders—and, when we say we will have asbestos awareness training so that workers can identify it, speak up about it and stop it from being put into a building, they say it is not allowed to be in an agreement between employers and employees. They are so restrictive. They are the new mother state, forcing upon an industry their own ideological obsession about breaking any ability for workers and employers to have a mature relationship.

The government also have a problem when employers, like Lend Lease, and their employees include in their agreement suicide awareness training. The industry acknowledges that there is a problem amongst their youth. They acknowledge and they recognise that they have lost too many of their own to suicide. By being proactive about it and sitting down with Lend Lease, they included suicide awareness training within their agreement, yet the government says, 'No, that's not allowed in the code.' Lend Lease is one of our biggest construction companies. If they want to build another Bendigo hospital, if they want to tender for a federal government contract or if they want to build the Hobart hospital, they have to strike out that clause in their agreement.

The government also have a problem with any clauses that look at long hours of work. The government also have a problem with casualisation. This is another clause that I know Australians would want to see in workplaces. In this particular agreement, if you work for an employer for more than six weeks, you are able to apply for permanency. That is something that used to exist many decades ago and many workers want to see it reintroduced.

The government—and this is the corker—also have a problem with heat policies in agreements. After a week and a half of question time and ranting about how people need to be able to put on their air conditioners in 40-degree heat and ranting about how people need to be in cool climates on really hot days, they want to exclude any form of heat policy in collective agreements, possibly forcing construction workers who are outdoors and exposed to work in climates that are unsafe. This is a government that is targeting the construction industry because it is an industry where they have been able to get on with the job in a mature way and work out an agreement.

This is a government, with the fact that they have brought in this rushed legislation, that want noncomplying companies to renegotiate their agreements from two years down to nine months. That will create chaos in the industry. Big companies will basically not tender for federal government work. This will put them at odds with state agreements that prioritise making sure that they have companies with apprenticeship ratios. In the state of Victoria there is a rule at a state government level. To tender for state government work, one in 10 of the people on the job must be apprentices. If Lend Lease had that in their contract, my question to the government is: does that exclude them from federal government work? The chaos that this government are creating in the construction industry to pursue their own ideology is just disgraceful. We know that the last time the ABCC was in, productivity crashed. We know that the last time the ABCC was in, workplace death and industry increased.

Weakening the employees' ability to negotiate with their employers does nothing for productivity. It creates division and it creates chaos. Let us just be reminded that this is one of the hardest industries to work in. They are working in very dangerous workplaces. So the fact that we have a government that wants to exclude so many safety provisions from collective agreements demonstrates just how out of touch the government is with blue-collar construction workers.

I call on the government to withdraw this amendment. I call on them to engage with the employers and listen to what they are saying. Go out on those construction sites and hear what those foremen and forewomen have to say about the ABCC and about the heavy-handed tactics of the ABCC. Go out there and talk to apprentices who are enjoying the fact that they are going to have a career in construction. But, if the government have their way, all we will see is an increase in 457 visas, an increase in backpackers and temporary workers on construction sites and a crash in apprenticeships, giving the next generation no opportunity. This is a bad bill amending another bad bill, and it demonstrates everything that is wrong with this government, who are driven by their hatred for the unions and their ideology to break workers.

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