Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise in support of the motion from the member for Kingsford Smith paying tribute to the International Labour Organization for reaching this incredible milestone of 100 years. It's a pity that the speaker before me didn't actually appreciate the significant role that Australia has played as a founding member state of the ILO and a continuing key partner in the ILO promoting a decent work agenda for people across the globe. Indeed, the cooperation between Australia and the ILO in our region is profound and absolutely worth celebrating. As I said, Australia has been a member of the ILO since it was founded back in 1919.

The ILO was the first specialised agency of the United Nations. It started at the end of World War I with the mission of advancing social justice and human and labour rights by establishing international labour standards. A former ILO director-general has described the primary role of the ILO today as being:

… to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.

No matter which part of the world you live in, your ability to get decent, secure work will have an enormous impact on the kind of life you're able to live. It's very easy to take things like the eight-hour working day and minimum wages for granted, but we need to remember that they don't come about by themselves or by accident. They come about through the tireless commitment and hard work of organisations, of bodies, like the ILO. Indeed, the ILO has been at the forefront of defining, defending and enshrining these sorts of right across the globe since its inception. It has a century's worth of achievements in bringing to an end exploitation, standing up to discrimination and addressing inequality. And it's driven some of the most important and wide-ranging international labour agreements and conventions in history. These include the banning of forced and child labour, enshrining the right to organise and the right to equal pay regardless of gender, and protection against discrimination on any grounds, including race, gender, religion, political affiliations or union membership.

The ILO's also worked tirelessly to address specific issues of worker exploitation on the ground. I was very fortunate to be part of a parliamentary delegation recently to Doha in Qatar. I was very pleased to meet with the head of Qatar's International Labour Organization Project Office there. We discussed the ILO's work on the ground and the really groundbreaking reforms they were embarking on in Qatar to protect the rights of migrant workers, including the freedom to change jobs, the removal of exit permits and a non-discriminatory minimum wage. Given that 90 per cent of the population in Qatar are migrant workers, these changes are profoundly important, and I am very pleased that Qatar's Council of Ministers has now formally endorsed these reforms and that they will come into force in January of next year.

All of this has been achieved through a very unique tripartite governing structure. Here representatives from government, employers and workers work together to debate and develop these important labour standards. The ILO has demonstrated time and time again that this is a fantastic model that works well. But of course it takes genuine commitment from all sides to be negotiating in good faith. This government could learn a lot from this model. Too many times we've seen this government take an actively aggressive position when it comes to workers' rights—we've just heard the rhetoric in the speakers before. Indeed, the only thing that seems to energise those opposite is attacking organisations that are there to protect workers and fight for better conditions.

While the government has left energy policy to languish and hasn't attempted to solve issues like homelessness and poverty, it has devoted an incredible amount of time to policies designed to tear down unions and slash workers' pay and conditions. We all know what that's led to: record profits and flat-lining wages, which, in turn, have driven widespread inequality, a hollowing out of the middle class and dangerously flagging growth. I urge this government to look at the evidence, listen to the experts and start a genuine engagement with workers and the organisations that represent them.

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