Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are lots of moments this week that are in competition for the top 10 terrible moments of this government, but one that is definitely on the list involved the Minister representing the Minister for Industrial Relations and his answer about labour hire, in which he said that it's just a non-issue—'a made-up issue'. This clearly demonstrates that this minister has no idea what's going on with labour hire. He has no idea that you have two workers working side by side, but one is being paid less than the other simply because they are working for labour hire. He tried to say that the better off overall test applied. You know what, I wish it did. I wish that the better off overall test didn't just apply to the workers on the collective agreement, but applied to all the workers at a workplace. That is one way to fix the labour hire issue, and if the minister wanted to bring that in as a bill we could debate that.

But in the absence of that bill being before us; in the absence of the government actually doing something positive to help workers on labour hire agreements, who are being paid less than their co-workers; they should support Labor's bill. The bill that is before the House is all about same job, same pay. If we in this country believe that if you do a fair day's work you get a fair day's pay, then we should have workers who are doing the same job getting the same pay. And they could start with their own workers. It is appalling that public servants doing the same job are on different rates of pay.