Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to associate myself with the comments of the member for Ryan. I too am a very great supporter of school chaplaincy and I am very familiar with the very good work that they do in my electorate. I also want to speak about the current Qantas dispute and to preface my comments by saying that Melbourne Airport is located in my seat of Calwell. It is the largest employer in my electorate, and any disruption to employment emanating from industrial action or job losses at Melbourne Airport has an immediate and significant impact on my constituents and their families.

Many of my constituents are currently employed at Qantas, and their futures are very much at stake in this dispute. In a letter sent to Qantas employees yesterday, CEO Allan Joyce, when referring to the three unions involved in the dispute, said:

Throughout the negotiations these unions have made demands that we cannot agree to, because they are unrealistic and unsustainable demands that would cost jobs across the company and threaten the survival of Qantas.

Mr Joyce is desperate to pin the blame on his workers for threatening Qantas's survival and to alleviate himself of his responsibility to protect Qantas's future.

For the record, I want to mention some of the things my constituents, Mr Joyce's workers, think of the situation currently at Qantas. They include workers who at no stage took any form of industrial action. They speak of a boys club running Qantas without transparency. They speak of a lack of investment in tools and training that would be adequate to maintain the engineering and maintenance capacity of Qantas planes here in Australia. They speak of a lack of job security and the deliberately opaque manner in which the company is being managed. They say that it is so opaque that, by stealth, Mr Joyce and his boys club presented Australia with the grounding of the airline last weekend as a fait accompli.

The Qantas workforce is proud of the Qantas brand, because generations of Australian workers have built that brand. Mr Joyce is, for all intents and purposes, a Johnny-come-lately—a here today, gone tomorrow CEO reaping the rewards of excessive executive pay packets. As the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport aptly put it:

This is a service industry that relies upon its workforce and the relationship with its workforce to deliver good, positive service on the ground. You do not get met by Allan Joyce when you book into a Qantas flight. When you sit on the flight you do not get served by Allan Joyce and the plane is not fixed and made safe by Allan Joyce.

A $3 million pay rise, amounting to a $5 million annual salary, seems obscene to most Australians, especially when compared with workers' salaries. While workers are condemned for wanting progression on their entitlements, Mr Joyce delivers himself a 71 per cent increase in his pay package. That is more than 62 times the average wage of the very same Qantas cabin crew members he shut the doors on last weekend. After scoring his cash grab—and my constituents and many Australians see it as a cash grab—Mr Joyce proceeded, as we have learnt and as we experienced, to lock out his workers without warning, without notice and, above all other considerations, disrupting the Australian economy and the Australian travelling public. While the government has acted in the national interest, it has to be said that the opposition have very much supported Mr Joyce's actions without any condemnation. The opposition speak of unions as some evil entity, ignoring the fact that unions have working memberships that keep the engine of our economy running. The extreme actions of the executive board and the militancy of the management that is running the airline not as it should be—not as an Australian asset vital to our airline industry and vital to workers and vital to tourism but as a boys club—seem to have escaped the condemnation of the opposition. For all their rhetoric, the opposition do not really value a productive economy that includes the rights of workers in a developing industry. This is not surprising given the opposition's record on industrial relations. This is the party of Work Choices, which was resoundingly defeated in the 2007 election by Australian working men and women who were not going to cop an attack on their right to better wages and better working conditions. So, in refusing to condemn Qantas for its action, the opposition prove that in reality they do not understand the hopes and aspirations of working Australians, and the Qantas workers in my electorate have a right to expect support from their political leaders. (Time expired)