Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to alert the parliament to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. It underlines my increasing concern about the unhealthy relationship between Labor governments in Australia and the unions of workers in Australia. This morning’s story in the Sydney Morning Herald referred to Australia Post, who have a computer lock key on their mailboxes so that, when the Australia Post workers go around to collect mail, Australia Post have a record of when a mailbox was accessed and who accessed it. The New South Wales government have an act called the Workplace Surveillance Act, and the New South Wales Attorney General has announced that today he will be personally appearing in the Federal Court to argue that Australia Post are answerable to criminal prosecution under the state’s Workplace Surveillance Act because they dare to want to know that their workers actually undid the mailboxes, collected the mail and moved on, and at what time. That is just extraordinary.

The reason that Australia Post do this is twofold. Firstly, there have been issues of mail theft and they need to know who has been opening post boxes and when. But there have also been issues of improper claiming of overtime, which this system in fact addresses. Have we got to a situation in this country where, under government legislation, the employer is not entitled to know the whereabouts of their employees and what they might be doing? Is that where we are at? If it is, that is just extraordinary. We are getting increasing unreasonable demands because the unions feel that, under the patronage of the current Labor governments, they are able to get away with this. Look at what has happened in Western Australia: increases in conditions that are worth $50,000 for no increase in productivity, leading to salaries of $200,000 in the Maritime Union operations in Western Australia. Ordinary Australians look at that and think that that is so wrong, and it is so wrong. All of us should understand that you just cannot keep upping your wages without delivering something in terms of productivity to the employer. I finish where I started: I am becoming increasingly worried about the unhealthy power relationship between Labor governments and unions in this country.