Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Six months ago today, or thereabouts, the Prime Minister claimed that good government was going to start. What have we seen? In the words of The Princess Bride, it is inconceivable to describe the last six months as good government. In fact, Deputy Speaker Scott, I assume that, like me, you are a big BuzzFeed fan. I think we all know that, if people were clicking on a button on BuzzFeed, they would be clicking on the 'fail' button at the bottom of the Abbott government post. That is the button that I would be clicking on if the Abbott government were a BuzzFeed article.

As the member for Bendigo quite rightly pointed out, this is a government that seems to think that it is a good idea to cut the penalty rates of some of the lowest paid workers in our community. This is a government whose Minister for Employment seems to think that it is appropriate to sack workers by text message and email. On Friday, I visited the community protest that had been established the very next morning at the Brisbane port. The workers told me that they had received text messages at around midnight the night before and were asked to check their email. On doing so, they found that they were being told that they no longer had a job and that their personal effects would be couriered to them because they were not to come back on site. That is not how we do things in Australia. If you are going to sack someone, you look them in the eye; you are not so gutless as to sack them by text message and email. It is a very great shame that we are seeing this in our nation today, and I hope that those workers know that they have a lot of support in the community.