Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance today, and I must say it has been absolutely amazing to listen as government senator after government senator gets up and tries to defend the indefensible: the appalling, disgraceful pay offer made recently to the Australian defence men and women. And what is the Abbott government's real agenda around this appalling pay deal to the Australian defence men and women? It is a shocking deal by any definition. By Minister for Defence Senator Johnston's own admission yesterday in this place, it is not worthy of the work of our defence forces. Wage increases of 4½ per cent over three years for defence forces deployed to all parts of the world—to northern Iraq, to peacekeeping missions and to other activities. Four and a half per cent to put your life on the line. But paltry offer does not even keep pace with CPI.

But wait; there's more. Defence Force men and women have to sacrifice their Christmas and recreational leave for this paltry increase. It does not stop there, as Mr Abbott has collapsed up to 17 existing Defence Force entitlements and pushed them into base pay—entitlements such as separation, hardship, overseas and skill-specific allowances.

The Abbott government may well get away with his paltry offer because, of course, the ADF cannot be union members and are prohibited from speaking out or taking industrial action over this paltry pay offer and loss of their conditions. But, as Labor knows, with the Abbott government there is always an ulterior motive, another sneaky deal and a backdoor way of operating. This disgraceful pay deal for the ADF is also about the whole of the Public Service where there is a union and where the government is making no headway at all with its mean offer to public servants. It thought it could put pressure on the rest of the Public Service by starting with defenceless Defence. We know this is the Abbott government's real plan. The PM said so when he told public servants, the very people who work in his own office, in my office and in the offices of all the members of parliament, that they should not expect more than the Defence offer.

But that failed too because public servants in the largest government agency, the Department of Human Services, have just voted in one of the largest industrial action ballots ever to take place in this country—and 95 per cent have voted in favour of taking industrial action. Senator Abetz described that threat of industrial action as irresponsible. What is irresponsible is the disgraceful pay offer to cut the work conditions of public servants for a less than one per cent increase. It is the absolute right of union members to take industrial action. There has been a vote, and the overwhelming response has been 'yes' to the question of industrial action. This is absolutely legal. There is nothing irresponsible about it at all. It is legal to the letter of the law.

The time has well and truly come for the Abbott government to start to take responsibility for their own actions in their disgraceful offer to the ADF personnel and in continuing to deny hardworking public servants the right to a pay offer. Some of those people have not had an increase for more than 12 months. The very people who work in the offices of all of us who operate in this place are also part of that group. It is time for the Abbott government to take responsibility to fix the Public Service offer to a decent level and to certainly fix the disgraceful and indefensible offer to the Australian Defence Force personnel.