Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports this disallowance motion for many of the reasons that have been advanced by my colleague. The regulation is designed to provide the Western Australian Liberal government standing in the Fair Work Commission, despite the fact that the Western Australian Liberal government did not concede its powers when every other state government did. We take the view that to provide the standing for the coalition government in Western Australia to deal with aspects of this act in the way that is proposed would certainly not be in the interests of workers in Western Australia.

I am cognisant of the time that is available for this debate. I would adopt many of the arguments that have been put up by Senator Rice. I would say that this is part of a suite of legislation that is before this parliament that diminishes the rights of workers, diminishes the rights of their trade unions and, as has been identified on many occasions now by both the scrutiny of bills committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, are in breach of international conventions, in breach of all of our commitments to international conventions and in breach of human rights. I will leave my comments at that given the time that is available.