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

You sometimes wonder if there are benefits to being further down the speakers list. To be on the list to speak in the address-in-reply debate the day after the budget does give me the opportunity to reflect on another shocker of a budget from this Liberal-National government, but I will leave those remarks for the end of my contribution.

This is an opportunity for me as the federal member for Bendigo to thank the many volunteers that were involved in the election campaign, to reflect on the fantastic electorate that I have the opportunity to represent and to talk about some of the really pressing issues and challenges that we have in our communities and economy, and for us as parliamentarians.

My electorate, Bendigo, is a large electorate. It is a Federation seat, meaning that for as long as there has been a Commonwealth, for as long as there has been a federal parliament, we have had a representative here in this place. When I was first elected in 2013 I said how proud I was to be the first woman to be elected to represent the federal seat of Bendigo. It took us over 100 years, but we got there. This time around, when I stand here to say how proud I am to have been elected the federal member for Bendigo for a second term, I am in the company of some great women leaders across all levels of government. At the state level, the three main seats that fall into my electorate—the seats of Macedon, Bendigo East and Bendigo West—are represented by three fantastic, progressive women: Maree Edwards, Jacinta Allan and Mary-Anne Thomas. The four of us work very closely together to ensure that our communities receive the support that they need. Their sisterhood and friendship is something that is ongoing, and I would like to acknowledge their support right at the beginning of this contribution.

At a local level, we have had equal success, having seen the election of a number of women to local government. For the first time ever, I stand here proudly and say, the three major councils in my electorate combined have a majority of women councillors. We also have three women mayors, and I would like to acknowledge the first six months of their terms and their efforts to represent our community: Councillor Sharon Telford, for Mount Alexander; Councillor Jen Anderson, for the Macedon Ranges; and Councillor—and good friend—Margaret O'Rourke, for the City of Greater Bendigo.

This level of representation by women does not happen by accident. It happens because men and women get together to say, 'We want to have equal representation,' and because people are encouraged and mentored. In my own organisation, the Labor Party, we have a proud tradition of acknowledging the need for a change of culture. The Labor Women's Network worked to change the rules within the party to set quotas, with the support of EMILY's List. When we preselect women in safe and winnable seats, we have women parliamentarians. I acknowledge that I am not the first in this tradition. I am part of a long tradition of Labor women and men working together to address the gender imbalance. I am very proud to say that we are on track on our path to reach affirmative action quotas of fifty-fifty. But I am more proud of the fact that in my part of the world we are achieving that goal at a local, state and federal level.

An election is always tough. That would have been no different for any previous federal member, and they would have told you that. We have great diversity and, with that diversity, comes strength. We have a major metropolitan, cosmopolitan city, Bendigo itself, plus a great network of regional towns and villages that make up the electorate of Bendigo. There are towns such as Malden with a population of about 700. They were the first notable town in our country because of their streetscape. They are going through their own battles with NBN Co to ensure that the construction of fast-speed broadband, fibre to the node, does not breach their heritage landscape. There are great and strong communities such as Macedon, Kyneton and Woodend that are going through a tree change. Only being an hour from Melbourne, they are now facing the housing price bite that Melbourne has as people move there, choosing the country lifestyle. That is creating pressures in those communities.

The Victorian component of the federal election many say was defined by the CFA dispute. I speak about the CFA dispute in many ways with great sadness. This government decided out of political desperation to blow up an issue to divide our community and, to this day, we have still not seen resolution. During the election, we saw the Prime Minister declare that he would fix the issue and resolve the differences. He used the election as an opportunity to beat up on paid professional firefighters, people who spend every single day protecting our community. Here we are, many, many months on, after a sham of a policy development rushed through parliament, and we have not seen a collective agreement reached. We have not seen decisions resolved. The pain continues in our state, yet the conversation in this place is finished. The Prime Minister should be condemned for the way he used politics to divide regional Victoria and, in particular, the CFAs in my electorate.

In the end, whilst they predicted I would lose the seat because of this issue, the politicians and the other people involved in politics forgot one fundamental, basic thing: the CFA reflects the community. In areas such as Malden and Chewton, CFA volunteer firefighters are also members of the Labor Party. They did not buy the rhetoric of this government. People in our community knew that this was a state based issue that someone was trying to politicise for political gain. Chewton I mention quite fondly because that is now the best 2PP group in the electorate of Bendigo—78 per cent 2PP to Labor—where we also have a very strong CFA and CFA community. They to this day still shake their heads at the way that this government tried to divide their town and their community.

The government also focused a lot on running a fear campaign. I would like to reflect on the fear that they created in Bendigo. Almost daily we had them saying there was a drug problem. Almost daily we heard that people were getting bashed, that it was unsafe. But, yet, we have not seen any commitment on how to fix the problem since or delivery of that. What we have had instead is more shops close. Fewer people go there to shop. It is becoming a real crisis point. Yet this government did very little to help and instead have put businesses at risk and reduced people coming into the centre of town by running a fear campaign about a very complex issue. This is the problem sometimes with our federal elections. People get caught up in the hysteria, do not win the seat and walk away and leave it.

I have actually run a review into Medicare. We did a survey of local doctors' surgeries. This government called it a 'Mediscare' campaign. The truth is that people are very scared about Medicare and what they are paying. In the survey that we conducted we found that, since this government was elected, we are down to four services that 100 per cent bulk-bill their patients. There are more and more services that are charging out-of-pocket fees, and, of the people that we surveyed in that review that we did six months after the election, on average they are paying $21 per consultation out-of-pocket. The government's decision last night to lift the freeze for GPs happened because, if they had not made it, more and more patients would have been paying out-of-pocket fees, and some of our rural practices would have closed. This is a snapshot of the damage the government have done to the delivery of healthcare services in regional areas like Bendigo. They still have not made up for the funding cuts to hospitals. As we celebrate the opening of the Bendigo Hospital—a brand-new, $630 million facility—I fear and am angry that this government are not paying their fair share to reduce waiting lists, to employ more nurses and to help meet the healthcare needs of not just Bendigo but the whole of northern and central Victoria.

The election was a good night, and there is a great photo of me in the Bendigo Advertiserthe ABC called the election result early, and I will never live down that photo of my surprise and excitement. I would like to thank all the branches and all the hundreds of volunteers that we have. We have a very strong Labor team across central Victoria—the Woodend branch, the Kyneton branch, the Castlemaine branch, the Bendigo branch and the Bendigo South Branch—rank-and-file, strong Labor people who, for years, have campaigned for Labor governments and Labor MPs. Without their support, we would not have held the seat of Bendigo. I would also like to acknowledge our brothers and sisters in the rank-and-file unions and affiliates: Luke Martin at the Bendigo Trades Hall, our nurses, our ambos, our cleaners, our teacher aides, our teachers, our construction members—the list goes on—RTBU, CFMEU, United Voice, the ANMF, the ASU, the NUW and the AWU. We have a strong family amongst our trade union movement, who are fighting every day to improve the rights of working Australians and to ensure that they receive a fair day's pay for a decent day's work.

Industrial relations is an area that is close to my heart. We have had some real failures and developments within the fair work space that need to be addressed. Companies have become quite bolshie and the rate at which Fair Work is terminating agreements must be stopped. On too many occasions, we are seeing employers and large multinationals file to terminate agreements as a bargaining step—as a way to bully employees to accept inferior wages. One of the first and most public examples of this is what happened at CUB. The company filed to terminate the agreements of maintenance workers who had worked there for a very long time. They wanted to move them onto a labour-hire company. The particular agreement that that labour-hire company had has been referred to as a bit of a dodgy, Work Choices era, zombie agreement. It was struck over in WA, nowhere near the site itself, and it massively reduced the pay of many of the workers there. After a six-months struggle, with the workers out the front, they won all of their conditions back. But it should not take that kind of action to get a company to respect its workforce. And I should say that they were not fighting for a massive pay rise; they were fighting to maintain their current conditions.

Unfortunately, the CUB dispute is not alone. Over in WA in the mining sector we have seen, time and time again, that companies file to terminate agreements as an aggressive tactic in bargaining. Some particular workers—again, maintenance workers—were facing 65 per cent pay cuts. What happens when Fair Work rules to terminate an agreement? In this particular case, they said to the workforce and to the company, 'You have six months to negotiate a new agreement, or you go back to the award.' These are massive pay cuts. This undermines the very principle of enterprise collective bargaining, which is supposed to be at the centre of fairness in the Fair Work Act.

We have seen also two lockouts. For example, there are the Echuca Parmalat workers, just north of where I am. That dispute was about labour hire. The workers there were saying they wanted to keep their clause to restrict the misuse and overuse of labour hire, which is so common these days by employers. Why were they so concerned? The Parmalat factory in Bendigo is a very good example. The Parmalat factory in Bendigo does not have a clause restricting the use of labour hire. The company there had a significant proportion of their workforce working for Manpower. They then changed labour-hire companies, and all the workers there were told to reapply for their jobs through a new labour-hire company. This company then said to those locally based skilled and trained workers, 'Sorry, we have no hours for you'. What we discovered a few weeks later was that that work had gone to Irish backpackers, who were being paid well below the award and were not aware of their rights. To this day, those workers that were skilled and trained working for the labour-hire company—the local workers—are still without work.

And that was why in Echuca they said, 'We will fight this to the very end'. They want to make sure that, if there is a job going at the Parmalat site, it will go to a directly employed local first—local people in our electorate, local people in our region. They want to make sure that if there is overtime they have the opportunity to put their hand up for it. They are fighting the casualisation of the workforce. The good news is that, after many days of being out, Parmalat agreed and they are back at work. But then that brings us to a new dispute: Fletcher Insulation in Dandenong. Again, after meeting with some of their members today I learnt they have been locked out for 85 days. They have been out the front of Parliament House. This dispute again is about job security. Their company—as at other places—has an unlimited labour-hire clause. This means that they can replace the workers at any time with workers who are paid the award, significantly undercutting the agreement. Their fight is not just for their own jobs but for the next generation. Again, we have seen the company apply to terminate the agreement.

At the moment, our enterprise bargaining is being distorted by companies who are manipulating it for their own purposes. Our coalminers in Queensland: up to 60 per cent of them are labour hire in Central Queensland. There are miners working side by side: one on a collective agreement directly employed; the other working on the award or less for labour hire, being paid $40,000 a year less for the same work. And it is completely legal because the Fair Work Act is deficient and this government is not motivated or willing to change it. They are ignoring workers.

The exploitation of temporary workers must be acknowledged. We have a bill before the House now, but it does not go far enough to address the exploitation of temporary workers, guest workers and people who have come here in good faith to work on a 457 visa. The government has only changed the name of this to a 417 visa. They do not know what their rights are in many cases. There are some cases of extreme modern slavery where they have their passports confiscated, are locked in and are living in appalling conditions. These are the issues that this government is failing to address.

It puts pressure on the local jobs market and creates division. If you can pay an exploited temporary worker $5 an hour and get away with it, before they get deported or before a complaint is made, then you are not paying the correct entitlements. I referred earlier to the Work Choices zombie agreements. These are a massive problem in our community. These are a demonstration that Work Choices is not dead, buried and cremated. Too many workers are stuck on these agreements. The processes of Fair Work are slow and the workers are struggling to get them terminated. The legacy of John Howard and Tony Abbott lives on. We have a lot of work to do to ensure that we can help create decent secure jobs, jobs that Australians can count on. For a government that said on election day that they are about jobs and growth, in a very quick period of time—

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