Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I'll deal with some procedural issues before I deal with the substance of what's before us. The Manager of Opposition Business went through what's in the blue, the daily program, and said that it was somehow in there an expectation that the Leader of the House, being me, was definitely going to be the one who would move that it be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The blue says that that will be moved by someone. But, when something comes through as a private members' bill, there is no presumption that it will be done by a minister. I know I did it on the first one, and I then endured a wonderful hour and a half of speeches telling me why it was a terrible thing to have done. And so I didn't do it on the three subsequent motions.

Apparently, all of those speeches for the hour and a half, which was what prevented the first bill from ever making it onto the Notice Paper, were apparently not true, if you were to believe the Manager of Opposition Business. He said in his speech on that first bill that we could have moved very quickly. Yes, we could have. But I couldn't give the right of reply speech until no-one else was jumping. The only way to move more quickly was either to (a) not filibuster or (b) for me to move that the member be no further heard or that the question be put, which I reckon, if I'd done so, the opposition would have had a problem and voted against that. The reason it wasn't done quickly was the behaviour of the opposition. That's what happened.

In terms of whether it can it be done, they say, 'When a bill comes from the Senate, normally the minister stands up and puts it on the Notice Paper.' Yes, they do because normally it's a government bill. But we have in the chamber right now the Leader of the Greens, the member for Melbourne, who, I remember, a couple of terms ago stood up and moved what the Manager of Opposition Business had been invited to move by the Speaker, which is simply that it be made an order of the day. Then, having moved it, you have carriage of it. And the second reading speech was then given by the member for Melbourne. That approach, which, if you check with the clerks, you read your procedure and you learn your rules, has happened in the past. And, as I say, of the 151 members of the parliament, not everyone's expected to do, but I'm probably expected to, and the Manager of Opposition Business is probably expected to. It doesn't happen when it's a government bill because of course when it's a government bill the minister's going to stand up.

In the first bill today, I did stand up and take it. But the Manager of Opposition Business had a problem with that and now apparently also has a problem when the opposite occurs. But it certainly never occurred to me that we would end up, when the second message came, with a long moment of silence where nothing happened. So we're going through a process now where we're going to end up with, of the four bills, none of them on the Notice Paper simply because of the—I won't use the noun, because that'd be unparliamentary—idiocy of the way this has been handled by the Manager of Opposition Business.

For the bill that's in front of us, there were some important issues made by the Deputy Manager of Opposition Business about what the view of first responders would be. We've had evidence on that both publicly and to the Senate inquiry. When you think about who first responders are, what this part of the closing loopholes bill does is acknowledge that, for first responders, PTSD can be presumed. If you've got PTSD, you shouldn't have to then go and prove it's because of your job. In the nine years that I was in opposition, I have no recollection of the government of the day doing anything in this area. Now they claim to be very passionate about it. If they're willing to support those parts of the closing loopholes bill when we get to the closing loopholes bill, that's great.

But it is also a concern of first responders that they don't only want this dealt with; they also want to avoid some of the forms of trauma. They also want the sections of this bill that deal with road safety, which make it safer for gig economy workers on the roads and make it safer for transport drivers for the road section. You don't just say, 'Oh, let's just presume you're all going to get PTSD because you're going to be turning up to those horrific accidents.' Let's also deal with the parts of the legislation that say, 'Let's avoid that.' Similarly, there's nothing more traumatic for first responders than when they turn up to a workplace death. That's why people want to keep the section of the bill, in exactly this context, that deals with industrial manslaughter, because if it's a crime to cause someone's death out of work it should be a crime to cause someone's death at work. But somehow that one's not urgent. You can't separate those issues from the PTSD issue.

What is the view of different first responder organisations? We got told before, 'All the first responders would just want this pulled out and dealt with.' Well, I'll tell you that's not the case. Scott Weber, CEO of the Police Federation of Australia—which I would have thought would, as an organisation representing the different state police federations, have a reasonable idea about what a whole lot of first responders think—said:

The bill needs to get up in its entirety … It's critically important this legislation go through in its entirety and quite soon …

The Police Federation of Australia doesn't cover the Federal Police, so what does Alex Caruana, the president of the AFP Association, say? 'We support the bill in its entirety.' What did we have in evidence? Simone Haigh, a working paramedic and president of the Ambulance Employees Sub Branch of the Health and Community Services Union Tasmania—listen to this one—said:

We see that the whole bill needs to go through together, not just separating us out for presumptive PTSD legislation.

If those opposite are serious in their speeches in caring at all about how this will affect frontline workers, they should look at what the organisations that represent them have said. They should look at the simplicity of the concept of wanting to make sure that you have a situation where you avoid horrific accident sites and turn up to fewer of them.

If those organisations are against dealing with these provisions separately, what are the organisations that are in favour? The Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and Master Builders Australia. How many of them had, in advance, called for this PTSD provision? I hadn't been lobbied about it. How many of that list of organisations had called for silica to be added to the role of the asbestos agency? It wasn't there. How many of them were willing—until they thought, 'Maybe we can say, "Split the bill," and that's a way of delaying it'—to call for anything other than the defeat of the bill in its entirety? There's a really simple reason for that. This bill addresses underpayment. It addresses people being underpaid, whether they're underpaid through the labour hire loophole or because they're in the gig economy with no minimum standards or because they are victims of wage theft. Those organisations all have people who pay their membership to help keep the wages bill low. It's part of their job.

So why are they suddenly supporting this? Is it because they're desperate to quickly see through provisions that they have never once in their history supported? No, and no-one thinks that's the case. This is a device, in the same way Senator Cash straightaway got behind the idea of splitting the bill: because they think that if they do this then next year they can argue, 'Oh, we've dealt with the urgent bits and we can keep putting this on for delay after delay after delay.' The original delay that the opposition called for was until October. The next delay they called for was until as late as February. Now they're saying 'no earlier than February'. There will be a further delay because, as long as there is any prospect of people being paid properly, the Liberal and National parties have a problem with it. When they were in government, we had wage theft legislation in front of the parliament. It was introduced by them, and they voted down their own provisions. This is another device to protect underpayment for workers. People know exactly what it is, and, outside of this room, in the little meetings that they have, those opposite know exactly what this is as well, because not one of them has ever called for any of these provisions prior to them being introduced by this government. They don't believe this is urgent. It's another delaying game and should be opposed.

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