Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is a disgrace. It contains assertions that are simply not true. It implies that Australian workers held up vital medical supplies to sick Australians—in particular, cancer patients—when this simply did not occur. It criticises hardworking Australian maritime workers and belittles them for the work that they do. And I say that it's not on. Many of those workers who this motion criticises live in the community that I represent. They're hardworking, community-minded people, and I'm here to defend them from this outrageous and untruthful attack on their character and their work.

This motion condemns maritime workers for their actions during a pay dispute that occurred with Patricks in September. The motion is inaccurate, it's misleading, and it's simply not true, and I'll explain why this is so. When the dispute between Patricks and the MUA hit the news in September, I telephoned the MUA delegate to verify the media reports and he explained the truth regarding the dispute. I want to go through some of the claims that are made in the motion. The first claim made by the member for Mackellar is that workers were seeking a pay rise of 30 per cent for people on $300,000. The MUA delegate explained that the bargaining claim was for six per cent. It was settled for 1½ per cent. Now, I know the member for Mackellar has great difficulty in counting, but even a child will know that there's a big difference between 30 per cent and 1½ per cent. As to the claim that these workers are on $300,000 a year, when I put that to one of the wharfies, he said to me: 'Do you think if we earned $300,000 a year we'd be out on strike?' That, I think, explains it all. It's simply not true. The other claim that was made by the Prime Minister during this dispute is that the maritime workers were holding up ships from unloading materials during a recession. What the Prime Minister said at that time, is—listen to this:

… 40 of them out there. You can go down to Port Botany or down to Kurnell and have a look out there and you can see them lining up and every single one of them lining up is being held back from Australians getting what they need in the middle of a recession.

That's what the Prime Minister said. So, again, I asked the MUA workers that work on the docks if any of the ships were being held up. None of those vessels were held up. And—if you don't believe me, Deputy Speaker—then I thought, let's consult the company. So I went to the Patricks website, where, very handily, you can look and see where a particular vessel is. And here is what it looks like: these are the 40 vessels the Prime Minister claims were offshore—

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