Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Industrial Relations. Why did he advise the House that the former Labor government cut funding to the Fair Work Ombudsman by 17 per cent when, in fact, it increased funding by 96 per cent? Why did he also claim that staff were cut by 20 per cent when, in fact, staffing rose by 97 per cent?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I advised the House that when Labor were last in office they cut funding to the Fair Work Ombudsman by 17 per cent and their staffing by 20 per cent, and the reason I advised the House of that is that it's true. What happened with the funding is that it grew over time and reached a peak, and then, when you were struggling around for your four surpluses to be delivered in one night, you chopped the feet out from under them. That's what you did. The funding went radically down, the staffing went radically down and the number of investigations went radically down, and Australian workers who wanted a robust organisation to investigate underpayment were left in the lurch. That's what happened, and that's why I informed the House of that.

The reason that you raise this now and the reason that you raised it yesterday is that we have two bills before the House today that are there to demonstrably help workers. How are they going to do that? They are going to establish basic rules of transparency around workers' benefit funds. They are going to ensure that there is lawfulness on worksites. What is really interesting is that last year the Australian Building and Construction Commission recovered $1 million worth of underpaid wages for workers, and what do the members opposite want to do to that? They want to get rid of it! They cut the funding of the Fair Work Ombudsman, which investigates underpayment, and the other great organisation that is recovering underpaid wages—they want to scrap it entirely. So the reason we are informing the parliament and the people of the truth is that it's a truth they need and want to know.