Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the important motion moved by my good friend the member for Mackellar. Labor should not be holding vital medicines hostage and turning Australia's wharves into battlefields during the COVID-19 crisis. With the complicit silence of federal Labor, the Maritime Union of Australia has been leveraging the COVID crisis to run industrial action at ports in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle. Under the cover of pay-rise strike action, the MUA is refusing to unload containers of vital medicines. At the beginning of October, it was estimated that over 100,000 containers were already caught up in the disruption. Thirty-eight ships were also facing delays to their berthing schedule. This meaningless chaos is creating additional expenses for Australian importers and exporters, who are already suffering under the COVID recession. The actions have threatened trade worth 5.4 per cent of GDP in New South Wales alone. With cargo banked up, imported goods are at risk of becoming more expensive, and this will hurt Australian consumers. In short, everyone loses as long as the MUA wins.

But, even more astonishingly, the union has been slowing the supply of vital medicines that Australians have needed. The CEO of Patrick Terminals says he has fielded calls from freight forwarders who were waiting weeks to unload vital diabetes medications. Medicines company Arititek has revealed it was facing order rejections from overseas suppliers due to the uncertainty over delivery and payments. Medicines Australia CEO Elizabeth de Somer was warned the unions' calls for reduced work hours would likely lead to entrenched medicine shortages. The strength and flexibility of each nation's health system has drawn a fine line between lives saved and lost during this crisis. Frankly, it's sickening that the MUA was happy to squeeze out our health system's resources in this context.

During the pandemic, Australians have made all sorts of sacrifices to protect their neighbours from COVID-19. Frontline hospital workers, doctors, nurses and GPs have put their own lives at risk to ensure Australians could be tested and treated, and we give thanks. We would expect that so many other people could do similar things. Business owners have shut their doors to stop the virus spreading. Tragically, many will never open again. Workers in hospitality, retail, tourism and other sectors have lost their jobs. Many have been forced onto welfare for the first time in their lives. Young Australians have sacrificed months of schooling and time with their friends. Victorians have surrendered their freedoms and their mental wellbeing through a long and painful winter in lockdown. Instead of embracing this spirit of solidarity and helping build resilience in our community, sadly, the MUA has held Australians hostage to extract their own selfish objectives. While the union demands pay rises, other Australians are dealing with the realities of COVID-19 in lost jobs and collapsed businesses. Now is the time that we should be backing our fellow Australians, not pursuing selfish, sectional, self-interested concerns which only hurt the broader community.

Sadly, of course, this is not the first time that unions have done exactly this type of action and undermined our nation in a time of crisis. Historian Hal Colebatch has described how union action during World War II undermined food and ammunition supplies to Australian troops facing the Japanese in New Guinea. As the Prime Minister has said, the MUA's action campaign is nothing but an extortion against the Australian people in the middle of a pandemic and a recession. Australians should be disgusted and are disgusted. Even the union itself is quietly ashamed of its own conduct. Rather than taking ownership for the disruption and delays, it has told false tales of faulty equipment and poor executive management. So far, the Labor Party have been silent in condemning this despicable action and runs interference for it in this parliament. They are complicit. If they had any concern for anything other than their own careers and their own puppet masters, the Leader of the Opposition and his apparatchiks would have the courage to stand up and condemn this despicable behaviour. As true as ever, Labor is happy to back militant unions against the interests of Australians and Australia—a gaping contrast to the productive approach taken by the Prime Minister during this crisis. It is time for the MUA to end this campaign of extortion and allow its members to get back to work and to back Australians and not to indulge in this selfish, self-interested, self-inflating practice again.

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