Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The golden thread that unites the very first conservatives, those who were elected to the first parliament in this federation, to those who occupy the opposition benches in this parliament is their complete contempt for unions, for organised labour for any attempt to bring into this House legislation which improves the organising power, the bargaining power or the substantive rights of Australian workers. Much has changed in conservative politics since the very first conservatives were elected to represent people in this House. But the thing that unites the very first conservatives and this sorry lot over there is their contempt for organised labour, their contempt for unions and their contempt for the labour movement.

Because this debate concerns industrial relations, the instinctive reaction of every coalition conservative speaker is to demonise unions and their role in society. Well, I want to do something different. I just want to tell a story about a man—my friend, mentor—a gentlemen by the name of Nando Lelli. He was a bloody legend, and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of men and women who are alive in the Illawarra today because of his work. Sadly, he passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning, but his legacy lives on. He was born in Ascoli in Italy in 1931. He came to this country in 1957 with nothing, but he leaves behind a rich legacy. He led the Port Kembla branch of the Federated Ironworkers Union through the turbulence and turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s. Whether he was a delegate on the site or at the bargaining table or in a tribunal, he held a commanding presence.

He's been described as a man who was impossible to ignore and difficult to dislike—very true. Dan Walton, the current secretary of the Australian Workers Union, successor to the Federated Ironworkers Association, remembers him as 'a shining example to all the union movement', and that is so true. He was a formidable negotiator. He was a clever industrial strategist. He was a genuine people person. I'd heard Nando long before I knew him. When I was a kid growing up in the Illawarra he was a regular voice on radio and on television. You could wake up in the morning to a community service notice, the voice of Nando Lelli advising people there was a meeting at the north gate. I didn't even know where the north gate was. I'd have been a preschool kid. There would be a notice on the radio in Nando's voice, or authorised by Nando, advising people that there was a prework meeting or a stop-work meeting at this gate or that gate at the steelworks.

He was principled, he was kind, he was generous and he was resolute. I first met him in the early 1980s, and he was a legend even in those days. He was very patient with this impertinent young activist and he answered questions and was generous with his time, providing mentorship and patient example. His call to action was the safety standards that existed in the then BHP steelworks in the Illawarra in the mid-1970s. It was a dangerous place to work. Too often men went to work and didn't come home—a very dangerous place to work. This motivated Nando, who'd seen too many of his work colleagues fail to return home from work, and on too many occasions he and his colleagues had to knock on the door of a widow and a family and explain that their husband had passed away at work.

So he organised the workforce. In fact, he took over the then branch of the union because he thought they were not doing enough to look after workers in the workplace. Because it was such a multicultural workplace he ensured that there was a representative on his branch committee of every ethnicity in the workplace, and that was quite a task; it looked like the United Nations. Steadily, through industrial action, through steadfast negotiations and through their own direct action they raised the standards of occupational health and safety in the Illawarra steelworks to a point where today they are actually an example not just to the country but to the rest of the world. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of workers who are alive today because of the animating force of Nando Lelli.

And it wasn't just in work health and safety. In the early 1980s the steel industry throughout the country and around the world went through a massive change. In fact, the year before I left school around 13,000 people from the Port Kembla steelworks were made redundant. It's the reason I became a lawyer and not a boilermaker. My career path would have been into the steelworks. It was Nando's job to negotiate on behalf of this disrupted workforce an arrangement with both the employers and the government to ensure that there was an industry and a regional transition for those workers whose jobs were lost. And 13,000, in a small community of less than 200,000 back in the mid 1980s, was a significant blow to the workforce. Nando knew that you could not hold back time. So the best thing that he could do was to negotiate generous separation payments and new restructuring and training programs for those who left the steelworks.

There were many people sitting alongside me in class at university who were former steelworkers, because the genius of the arrangement they put in place was that you could take the redundancy package or you could take an employer and government supported pathway into university and have a wage paid and your university and your tuition paid, and you could convert yourself and provide a new career path for yourself. This was the genius of Nando and his colleagues, ensuring that there were not only redundancy payments but a new life and a new opportunity and new pathways for those workers. They were heady days. We look back at it now and think it was all obvious. It was leadership and principle of men like Nando Lelli that led to that occurring.

I listen to debates like the one I have just heard, and I hear people stand at this dispatch box, and their instinctive reaction is to say, 'Labor's bringing a bill about workplace relations and it's about union rights and workers' rights and about creating power in the workplace.' All they can muster up is an impassioned speech based on untruths—based on a perception which is, at best, 30 to 40 years out of date—that have absolutely no bearing on needs or what's going on in a workplace today.

Less than 30 metres from where I'm standing now, there are gathered in the government caucus room 30 or 40 early childhood educators. They have come to bring their message to parliament. These are the people we entrust with the job of ensuring that our kids get a good start in life. It's education not child care. They can't afford to stay in their jobs. I visited a great early childhood education organisation, in my electorate, a couple of days ago. I spoke to the manager. She said that at any one point in time she has a 10 per cent vacancy. I asked her where people go after they leave, whether they go to another early childhood education centre. She said, 'No, they can't afford to stay in the industry. They go to Bunnings, they go to Woolworths, they go to retail, they go to some other industry. They cannot afford to stay in their jobs.'

So when I hear the overheated rhetoric of those on the other side about, 'What's this multi-employer bargaining thing all about?' it's about them. It's about ensuring that these low-paid workers who we entrust with an incredibly important job have the capacity—they're never going to be able to get ahead bargaining directly with their employer, one worksite by another worksite. In fact, their employers support them. They know the only solution is a multi-employer solution, whether it be regional, state based or national based. That's what this is all about, not this other crap that you're going on about. It's animated by the spirit of man like Nando Lelli and the needs of the people 30 metres away from us here.

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