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

I suppose the issue that this raises is the fundamental position put forward by the government that one of the reasons they needed to have changes to the act was to have the volunteers have access to the commission. I think everyone here knows—most would that have known me for some time—that I have had a long relationship with Commissioner Roe. He was the president of the AMWU, and I was the national secretary. There is no secret to that around the place. But I just want to indicate that Commissioner Roe is highly respected—a highly respected commissioner, both by unions and by employers—and that he has a reputation second to none in the commission.

What Commissioner Roe was faced with was the CFA—which basically comprised four volunteers and the board—Ms Nolan, who is supposedly the hero of the volunteers, writing to the commission and saying to the commission: 'Don't allow the volunteers to have a voice'. Now this is a fundamental issue—an absolutely fundamental issue. If Commissioner Roe had been advised by the CFA that they had no objection to the VFBV having a voice, then all the hullabaloo—all the nonsense that we have now—may not have been an issue. Because Commissioner Roe could have determined under the act that the VFBV could have had standing, and accepted that standing, and the fundamental basis of this bill would have fallen apart. But here we are now told that the chief executive of the CFA denied in writing any agreement for the VFBV to have access to the commission. I would ask crossbenchers to think about this carefully, because what you are being asked to do is to put in rights of standing for the VFBV that the hero of the VFBV—the hero of the coalition—Ms Lucinda Nolan, denied them during the dispute. What is going on here? Well, I do know some things that are going on and they are not nice. They are not good.

Minister, you did not answer many of my questions—you have not answered any of them. But in relation to this fundamental point, do you agree that if the CFA had not denied the VFBV standing—well, it was the commissioner that denied standing, but they objected to the standing—and that if the commissioner had provided standing on the basis that the employer had agreed to standing, that could have meant that this bill would have been null and void, and not necessary?