Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the most important issue as far as the people of Blair are concerned. Wherever I was campaigning, whether it was in Boonah, Booval, Withcott, West Ipswich, Karalee or Kalbar, they all talked to me about Work Choices and the fact that it had gone too far. At the markets in Boonah I recall a woman who had voted coalition all her life coming up to me and telling me that she could not understand why John Howard had done this to her. I remember a woman who spoke to me at the Yamanto shopping centre in Ipswich who was forced to sign an AWA or lose her job after 30 years of service to a local company. I recall a man at Gatton who was given an AWA in disguise which stated that he would not get a pay increase for five years, and it was given to him two days before Christmas. I recall a single mother who left her job to accept a job with a multinational company and who at the end of the training weekend was given an AWA which said that she could be sacked if she was five minutes late for work. These are just some of the many stories that I heard as I campaigned around Blair.

There are more than 13,000 union members in Blair and they are decent, hardworking Australians who care for their families. They want a fair and flexible system. It is that emphasis on fairness which caused them to vote the way they did. They told me they did not accept an illusory fairness test. They told me they wanted to build on the hard-won conditions they had had for many years. I want to pay tribute to the many unions who fought the campaign so hard to scrap Work Choices in Blair. Particularly I want to thank the ASU, the NUW, the BLF, the ETU, the AMWU, the QPSU, the AMIEU and the QTU. I want to thank particularly the local convener of the Your Rights at Work campaign, Gordon Abbott, and his wonderful family; Jim Nilon, the coordinator; Jo Blackmore and her husband, Mark; Steve Franklin—and I wish him well in division 10 on the Ipswich City Council on 15 March; and Paul Williams.

The rights of working families in Blair were under attack, and they told me so. If only they had taken a leaf out of the Ipswich City Council’s book on their attitude towards Work Choices. I commend Mayor Paul Pisasale and Deputy Mayor Victor Attwood, who vowed and declared that they would never put the employees of the Ipswich City Council on AWAs. We have elections in Queensland on 15 March. Blair will see the formation of the Lockyer Valley Regional Council and the Scenic Rim Regional Council. I call on the new mayor on each of these councils, whomever he or she may be, and the councils generally, to treat the workers in the councils, their employees, with fairness and equity, because that is what they want. We never want to see the situation we saw in the Boonah Shire Council, where workers were forced to go on AWAs and in response they unionised. They objected and there was a lot of disputation in the local area.

I call upon these councils to do the right thing by their workers. Also, I have been asked by many people locally to call on the opposition, on behalf of the people of Blair, to give an unequivocal and irrevocable commitment to never again attempt to reintroduce Work Choices in any way, shape or form. I am pleased that the coalition have seen some sense and will not oppose the Rudd Labor government’s Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. It is not about recentralising workplaces; it is not about union control. It is about fairness and equity in the workplace.

The people of Blair spoke on 24 November. They gave the Labor Party a 10.2 per cent swing. They worked hard. All across the area I met people who found it tough meeting the pressures of life. They found it tough when it came to interest rate payments. They found it tough when it came to petrol price increases. They found it tough when it came to their grocery basket. They told me one message, and that message was simple. It was about looking after their best interests. I commend the new Rudd Labor government on what they have done. I thank Kevin Rudd and Labor for their support in Blair. I pledge to the people of Blair my commitment to get rid of Work Choices and to bring in a simple, fair and flexible arrangement for all the people of Blair.