Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hate to correct my opponent, but you do not bleed through eyes at all—there is no such thing, like much of your argument. I would have loved to see you build anything in Defence while in government, but that did not happen. But let's go to further misrepresentation, and I am glad that we have you in this chamber, Mr Speaker. What we saw today was a terrible misuse of young people by the leader of the Opposition, who trotted out two vulnerable workers, who, according to him, had been harmed and needed to be protected. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all we had a worker—the Labor changes will not protect him because he works in small business. More concerning, the Leader of the Opposition brought forward a worker from my electorate of Bowman and referred to this person as 'vulnerable' and 'desperately needing Labor's protection'. Where this individual works—and this will be news to the chamber—the workers are fully united behind the management. It is a very effective sports club with a strong spirit and there is absolutely not one sinew or moment of misuse or poor treatment of workers.

Yes, there is one unhappy worker, but that is not the same thing. Coelho said that:

Anything that happens once will never happen again. Anything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

We have one or two examples in every workplace of unsatisfactory relationships, but let's be honest about what happened here in the Capalaba Sports Club. This was an arrangement for 38 hospitality staff and a new wage agreement was introduced from interstate. The wage agreement had actually been approved by Fair Work Australia the previous year. It was not just approved by some disreputable commissioner; this was approved by a commissioner of Fair Work Australia who was the boss of Unions NSW. That is right—it was a Labor-approved commissioner who approved the agreement that was brought to this club where this young worker, who was trotted out by the Leader of the Opposition today, came from. There was every punctuation mark of correct approach in introducing that new system, with appropriate emails, messages, signs, meetings. All of that was followed to the letter. The claim that this person was sacked on the spot has never been substantiated, but there is a mountain of evidence to show that procedures were followed appropriately.

About this agreement that was approved by Unions NSW, where case studies were introduced—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And you may smirk on the Labor side, but you approved it through Unions NSW. Case studies showed that workers were no worse off. This opposition hates hearing that—no worse off. The first lie was that no penalty rates were paid. But, in that agreement, penalty rates were paid; they just were not as high. It is impossible to get Labor to admit that. In return for that, the base wage was increased. That is how a case study is shown to a commissioner and ticked off by Fair Work Australia.

So what was the first thing that Labor did up there? You always say that the coalition never wins an industrial relations debate. Well, they managed to find the stupidest exponent of industrial relations on the Labor side—the local state member, who could not, for the life of him, calculate a penalty rate. This is a Labor union MP from the seat of Capalaba who, when it came to calculating a penalty rate on a Sunday, doubled the 25 per cent loaded amount and got the wrong rate. Not only did he make the mistake but he promulgated that figure all over social media. Ultimately, he was forced to retract and apologise. You know what? You may not be able to calculate a penalty rate but you will find a job as a Labor state MP.

Then we had the claim of staff being $5,000 worse off. Never substantiated. The only way you could possibly be worse off is if you were a hypothetical staff member who only worked on public holidays. But at the Capalaba Sports Club, all 38 of them are full-time casuals working four to five shifts a week, and they are no worse off. So what does the union do next? Home visits. They found the home addresses of staff at that club by either using the electoral roll of the state MP or raiding that club and taking pay slips. They knocked on the door of young teenagers and asked their parents if they would be interested in getting thousands of unpaid dollars back off that nasty club—all of which was fabricated. Thank God those parents turned them away; they professed to be union investigators. Lastly, we had a invited visit from the Fair Work Ombudsman, who was able to fully evaluate this in an independent fashion.

In the end, it all went away. The worker went and found a job somewhere else. The Fair Work Ombudsman completed the case. Then, fronting a tsunami of legal action in the federal court, the club decided to pull out. And that is the end of— (Time expired)