Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am not surprised that it did not take Senator Abetz very long to come out with the true agenda of this legislation. He starts on ‘the ALP, captive of the unions’, saying that all we want is to have as many people as possible classified as employees. Just so that anyone who is listening does not misunderstand us and does not get sucked in by Minister Abetz’s political agenda, which is what is really driving this bill: what the ALP wants is to have genuine contractors classified as genuine contractors and having the rights of genuine contractors and to have employees classified as employees and having the rights and protections that go along with that classification. That is what we seek to happen—nothing more and nothing less. To suggest that we are anti independent contractor or anti genuine contractor in any way is an absolute fallacy.

Let me say this, and it is not just words: I am an electrician by trade, and I know full well that the union I was a member of had as members more contract electricians than the employer federation, the employer organisation—many more. Unions are actually excluded by legislation that this government puts forward from representing contractors in collective contract negotiations. Why do they do that? It is because, many genuine contractors wish to use the union movement to negotiate for them on their behalf in contract negotiations—