Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Chair, I do not know what Senator Roberts's problem is with big, muscly men. The fact is it does not matter what your size is in this country; you deserve rights to safety and protection at work, whatever your job is and whatever your physique may be. I know we are being broadcast, so you may not be able to see the stature of Senator Roberts, but I can understand why, perhaps, Senator Roberts is intimidated by people who may be a little bit larger and more muscly than him. But it is not an excuse to come into this place and demand that people, regardless of their stature, regardless of their size and regardless of what industry they work in, do not deserve rights to be protected at work or to be assured that those safety precautions are there.

This amendment goes directly to the element of retrospectivity. We do not want to see those protections, particularly in relation to safety and the basic welfare of workers, ripped up because this piece of legislation is pushed through tonight or in the early hours of tomorrow morning. We need to make sure that when people are working in dangerous environments and tough environments such as construction sites across this country—whether you are building the new hospital in Adelaide or whether you are on the building site of a housing development in Sydney or whether you are in a suburb in Brisbane—they know the rights that they have fought for, to have safe working conditions, are absolutely underpinned and insured. I am extremely concerned that the way this code has been drafted by the government will create massive chaos. People will have to renegotiate those very basic principles. It will create a situation where even employers will be scratching their heads, saying, 'We thought we went through all of this. Why do we have to do this all over again?'

In yesterday's the second reading debate I was particularly concerned with the welfare of young workers in this sector. There will be young electricians or labourers on worksites who, because of the intimidation that will be supercharged through this legislation, will not be able to stand up for themselves on these sites. They will not have the protection of a union which comes in to say, 'Hang on a minute. The safety requirements that should be there are just not there.' We are telling young Australians that they have to get into the workforce and that they need to get skilled up to go out and get a job—we keep hearing that from this government over and over again—but the government is kicking young people because they are unemployed and they do not have work. Here we are with a sector that desperately needs workers, particularly young workers, and we are about to say, 'Go on, go into this sector, go off into this industry,' where people will be intimidated to stand up for their own rights to be protected in the workplace.

We know that the last time the ABCC laws were in place deaths on worksites went up. That is the truth: the number of deaths on worksites went up the last time the ABCC legislation passed this parliament. People were intimidated to point out that something was not safe. Young people were not encouraged to look out for each other in case they were seen to be troublemakers on the construction site. For a number of senators in this place who sprout a whole lot about the rights of individual freedom, it astounds me that the ability for workers to defend themselves against the big bosses is being undermined. In fact, workers are going to be punished under this legislation. We do know that deaths on construction sites went up the last time the ABCC laws were in place. I do not want to see that happen again.

I remember talking to a number of workers after a young colleague of theirs died on the site of the new Adelaide hospital. It was a tragic circumstance where young person went to work. He had been told to stop bludging and go and get a job. So he got a job in one of the toughest environments and he died. He did not get home that day; he did not even get his lunch that afternoon. That is not the type of circumstance that should be ignored as we debate this legislation. The protections that currently exist in people's employment arrangements—protections that have been fought for long and hard between employers, employees and their representative unions—must be maintained. Despite all of the government's spin and despite the idea that they want government out of people's lives, this bill does the exact opposite—it injects government into the lives of construction workers and their families.

It is not going to be pretty. We will see more dangerous worksites, people intimidated from standing up and speaking out about even basic things like the hours people have to work without a break. Why should it be that an employer and a group of employees in a particular company will have to go back and start from scratch when it comes to agreeing to how many hours those people must work? It is ridiculous and it has absolutely nothing to do with productivity—it is the exact opposite of what you would be doing if you wanted to promote productivity in the building and construction sector.

It is the damn shame that Senator Bob Day is not here because I would love to ask him questions about the productivity of his worksites and how he would respond if the government wanted to get its fingers into the arrangements that had already been worked out in his construction sites and projects. He would be saying, 'Get out of this. I've worked this out. My workers are happy; I am happy. You can bugger off. We don't have to review all of this.' But here we are with the government of the day pretending that they care about productivity and pretending that this is all about a small-government agenda when in fact it is all about being the big bogey man that comes in to intimidate workers and push them to the sidelines—while the government uses this as part of its propaganda against the union movement. It is pathetic; it is unnecessary. For any senator in this place to stand here and start sprouting that this is about freedom, you have rocks in your head. I commend the amendment to the chamber and I hope that my words of reason perhaps have had some impact on Senator Roberts.