Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

You are very friendly. Senator Cameron said that I am putting politics ahead of safety. He is nodding his head, and I am shaking my head, saying that that is absolutely wrong. I am very disappointed that Senator Cameron is saying that. We have done a lot of good work together, particularly relatively recently in relation to the security of payments legislation in the building industry. That, to me, is about a safety issue that needs to be dealt with. Senator Cameron and I will no doubt be having many more discussions in the context of the ABCC legislation on that.

But to say that this is putting politics ahead of safety is a slur. It is unfair. We need to consider what the impact will be if this legislation does not go through. The real risk—the real danger—is how many of the over 35,000 active volunteer firefighters in the state of Victoria will say: 'We are not going to do this anymore. This is just too hard for us, because under the current framework we are being discouraged from being volunteers.' That is a perception, a perception that leads to a reality, and that is something we need to take into account. That is my concern.

I am sure we can have a decent and civil and robust discussion on this during the committee stages of this bill, but we cannot ignore that factor. We cannot ignore the fact that former Minister Garrett resigned from the Victorian cabinet in relation to this and the fact that she has made a number of complaints relating to this whole process before the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. I do not think it is proper to comment on the rightness or wrongness of that complaint, but it just gives you an idea of how bitter this whole dispute has been. It must not be ignored.

We cannot ignore the fact that the whole board of the CFA was sacked . The chief fire officer resigned. These are issues that go to safety. It is about how you integrate the volunteers and the paid firefighters, the members of the UFU—who, by the way, I have absolutely no doubt do absolutely outstanding work in protecting Victorians and protecting lives and property in the state of Victoria—and I believe this bill seeks to clarify that.

This bill does contain a number of clauses in terms of definitional matters as to how disputes are to be resolved and what the rights of volunteers are. I think it is more appropriate to raise those in the context of the committee stage of this bill—how it will work, what the scope of the regulations will be—because it is the manner of the implementation of this bill, through the regulations, that will be very important.

I do not see this as a warning—I say this as an observation—but if the government gets it wrong or overreaches, in terms of the regulations then that could subject them to a disallowance motion in the Senate, and we would be back, if not to square one, close to square one in terms of dealing with these matters. This legislation facilitates a process.

I expect that there will be a very robust and lengthy committee stage of this bill, as there should be, because there some concerns have been raised about the constitutionality of this bill, there are concerns about how this bill will work and there are concerns as to whether this is an overreach on the part of the Commonwealth in what is largely state legislation. But I counter that argument by saying that because the Fair Work Commission is involved and because there is that interaction between state legislation covering volunteers and dealing with the Fair Work Commission—federal legislation—if there is a dispute such as this that seems to be intractable, there must be an opportunity to resolve it.

I believe this bill, as imperfect as it is, provides the mechanism to resolve this and, above all, to give certainty to the 35,000 volunteer firefighters to be able to continue to serve their community alongside their fellow brave firefighters in the UFU. That, to me, is what the substance of this bill is about.