Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It takes a lot of guts to stand up at the front of a room and deliver some hard news, particularly if that hard news means that over 500 blokes in that room will lose their jobs. I pay tribute, today, to the work carried out over the last month by the AWU south-coast branch, the AMWU, the ETU and all of the unions that represent workers at BlueScope's Port Kembla steelworks. They landed a deal, last week, that put in place a pay freeze for over two years. It means that 500 of the 5,000 workers at that plant will not have jobs by the end of the year.

I call on members opposite to interrupt their often vitriolic anti-union diatribe against unions to pay some respect to the hard work done by people like Wayne Phillips and Brad Hattenfels, who put the interest of the region, the longer-term interest of the workforce, against their own interests by standing up and delivering a hard message. They have secured a future, in the short term, for the steelworks. More work needs to be done. We are calling on the New South Wales Premier, Mike Baird, to come to the party. Payroll tax concessions are needed. We are also calling on the federal government to put in place the work that needs to be done, through the Anti-Dumping Commission and labour-market programs, to help those losing their job find their way back into another one.