Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government that has declared war on the working men and women of Australia. Under this Liberal government, Australian wage earners suffer pay cuts and tax rises, while corporations enjoy record profits and tax cuts—tax rises for wage earners, tax cuts for corporations and millionaires. But that's not enough for this government. This government also wants to squash the ability of Australians to act in their own interests in the workplace. It does not want to negotiate fairly with Australian wage earners over pay and conditions. Instead, it wants to give itself and its corporate friends the whip hand, using the power of legislation, the blunt instrument of legislation, to permanently handicap wage earners' negotiating position.

This is a government enacting laws to entrench control in the hands of a corporate elite that believes it is born to rule. The Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2017 before the House today is a case in point: 80 pages of legislation, introduced to the parliament six days ago, rushed through this place in under a month in order to evade the usual scrutiny. There's been no consultation with the people and organisations most affected by this bill. What we know about this bill is bad enough. But who knows what forensic probing might uncover if the parliament was given the opportunity to examine it properly. It is disappointing that Senator Xenophon, in one of his last acts as a senator in this place, for one reason or another has used his crossbench influence to diminish rather than enhance the ability of the parliament and particularly the Senate to scrutiny the legislation. He has allowed this bill to be fast-tracked through the Senate and he should be condemned for it.

What we know about this bill is that it seeks to hobble the ability of unions to cooperate with employers. It establishes a raft of unnecessary new regulations around workers' entitlement funds, including prohibitions. Unions and employers have for many years jointly created funds that enable things like training, safety courses, bereavement payments, mental health counselling and so on. These are things that help create safer, better, more caring and more harmonious workplaces. So, of course, these things do not fit this government's agenda. The last thing this government wants is unions and employers working together. Industrial peace does not fit the Liberal script. For this government's political agenda to work, unions must be cast as bad, corrupt, evil things to be hated and demonised. It is only by fomenting hate that this government can galvanise its forces. Harmony and cooperation do not work for this government. It needs fear and division, and that is clear in nearly everything this government does and everything this government says on nearly all policy agendas before this parliament.

So, rather than congratulating unions and employers on working together for the common good, and in doing so contributing to historically long levels of industrial peace in Australia, the minister defames these arrangements as 'cosy deals'. No mind that they are transparent and that they are subject to rigorous scrutiny and regulation. No. Just throw out a lazy smear and hope it will be picked up by the tame poodles and minions in the Murdoch press. Never mind that this minister, always so ready to smear unions, had at her right side for a year a man who actually broke the law, and she did nothing. She didn't call in the police. There was no raid on her office, to send him away, shackled and handcuffed. No: she knew for a year he had broken the law, and she left him there—Nigel Hadgkiss, the so-called tough cop on the beat, who broke the law that he was meant to uphold. This minister will go off her rocker in the Senate if a union member so much as jaywalks, but she stayed silent for a year about the head of the ABCC breaking the law when it's his job to uphold it. It is absolute, abject hypocrisy.

This employment minister has done nothing to protect the workers of 7-Eleven and the raft of other rip-off merchants. This employment minister has done nothing to call in the authorities to deal with phoenix companies that go bankrupt rather than pay workers their entitlements. This employment minister has done nothing but smear unions and union members while 28 construction workers died at work this year alone; 28 men and women have died at worksites in Australia this year so far, and what are this employment minister's words? What are this employment minister's actions? Zero—nothing, nada. That is because this minister does not really see herself as an employment minister. She is the anti-unions minister. She doesn't see it as her job to ensure that employers pay their workers fairly or that employers keep their superannuation payments up to date or that employers ensure that worksites are safe. No: she sees it as her job to destroy unions, because they are just so damned inconvenient when it comes to this government's agenda of abolishing secure, permanent work and higher wages.

On that note, I note that the member for Gorton has moved an amendment to this bill on penalty rates. I just can't believe—I still shake my head—that this year we have seen this government back in a decision to actually cut penalty rates—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11 : 07 to 11 : 19

On the issue of penalty rates, we've had the extraordinary situation this year of this government backing a cut in workers' pay. I never thought I'd see the day when a government would rejoice in Australian wage earners having less money to take home to pay the bills. Jannette Armstrong, who heads up the United Voice union in Tasmania, a union that represents hospitality workers, who are very affected by these penalty rate cuts, says this is just the beginning—and we know that's true. She says:

Yes, this is many students, but this is also many, many families who rely on these penalty rates to pay the rent, put food on the table, put petrol in the car and it’s just going to make life so much harder.

We’ve had members and delegates in tears, we’ve had people calling us asking us when it starts, how are they going to go home and tell their families this afternoon that Mum just got a massive pay cut?

It won't be long before other industries and more workers are affected by cuts to penalty rates if we let these cuts stand, and that is why Labor is committed to rolling them back. Families are doing it tough already under this government, and things don't need to be made any tougher. Penalty rates need to be restored.

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