Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let us get back to what One Nation is going to be voting for. Currently, building companies are able with their workforce to enter into enterprise bargaining agreements that place restrictions on the use of casuals and people who are hired on a daily basis. If this legislation goes through they will not be able to have such enterprise bargaining agreements anymore. So what One Nation is preparing to do in supporting this legislation is clear the way for building companies to be able to get rid of permanent workforces, get rid of full-time or long-term employment that puts bread on the table for construction families and allow employers to bring in more casuals, more labour hire and more daily hire. How is that going to assist the battlers that One Nation says it stands up for? How is that going to assist the blue-collar workers it says it cares about?

This legislation will remove the inclusion in enterprise bargaining agreements of clauses around ratios of apprentices. Currently, many enterprise bargaining agreements around the country that, as a result of agreement between employers, unions and workforces, require that a certain proportion of the workforce be apprentices. That is good for the country, it is good for young people and it is good for our future workforce, but One Nation is getting ready to take away that right. No longer will building companies be required to have a certain proportion of their workforce be apprentices. One Nation is out there talking about how it wants to fix youth unemployment, how it wants to give young people a chance. What do you know? It is coming in here and is going to vote directly against young people. It is selling young people down the drain, just as it is getting ready to do with the Newstart cuts that the government want to bring in and that it is preparing to support also.

Finally, for over 20 years we have been hearing from Senator Hanson about how she does not like foreigners and how it is all about Australians and local workers rather than overseas workers. Get this: if this legislation goes through, the ability of building companies, unions and their workforces to enter into agreements that place restrictions on the use of overseas temporary visa workers is going to be removed. Right now there are many enterprise bargaining agreements in the construction sector across the country in which employers, unions and workforce have reached an agreement that if you want to hire temporary overseas workers you have to comply with Australian laws. One Nation is getting ready to make it impossible for companies to reach such agreements. I know of one particular agreement in the construction sector in my home state of Queensland which contains a clause that says that if a construction company is going to make people redundant local workers cannot be made redundant before temporary overseas workers. It seems like a reasonable thing to me. It seems like the kind of thing the battlers would want. It seems like the kind of thing that One Nation is out there beating up foreigners about every single day of the week! It is coming here today to remove those clauses from enterprise bargaining agreements. If One Nation supports this legislation, construction employers will be able to employ temporary overseas workers willy-nilly, without any restrictions being placed on them. They will be able to lay off local workers before laying off temporary overseas workers.

Senator Roberts and Senator Hanson, how is that helping the battlers that you say you represent? It is not. You are complete frauds. Every time you come in here, you vote against the interests of the people you say you represent. Before long, they are going to start knowing about it. The reason they are going to know about it is that people like me are going to come in here and hold you to account repeatedly. Every day of the week in Queensland, we have to suffer by listening to you saying that you stand up for battlers, that you stand up for average working people. We all know that you do not. We all know that you are an offshoot of the LNP. We all know that you are up to your necks in preference deals with the LNP in Queensland. So it is no surprise that you are all going back to your LNP roots and voting for policies that harm battlers—policies that sell out battlers and working people—and that are just about getting more money for the big end of town.

There is one party in this parliament that is not going to cop that, and that is the Labor Party. We have always stood up for battlers. We have always stood up for working people. Our record shows that, with the number of policies that we have introduced over the years that have delivered time and time again to battlers. We are still doing it now, despite not only the opposition of the government, the LNP—who we do not expect anything better from—but also the opposition of One Nation, who say one thing and do another.

To give you one example, the city of Townsville is struggling in the post-mining boom. They have got unemployment of 11.2 per cent. They have got youth unemployment of 17.6 per cent. If One Nation get their way and this legislation goes through, there is nothing in it for unemployed people in Townsville. They will be exposed to the risk of being laid off from construction sites before temporary overseas workers are laid off. They will be exposed to the risk of being replaced by casuals, being replaced by daily hire workers, rather than being made permanent employees. There is nothing in this legislation for young unemployed people. One Nation are getting ready to remove the requirement for employers to employ a certain proportion of apprentices. To those 17.6 per cent of young unemployed people in Townsville: 'Sorry—One Nation are not here to help you. They're going to sell you down the drain.' You had better get used to it. They have been doing it ever since they got elected. They are getting ready to do it on pension cuts, on family tax benefit cuts and on Newstart cuts. Now they are doing it with workplace conditions. As I say, I do not expect anything better from the LNP, but I do expect something better from a party that say they are for battlers. But as we all know, last time round Senator Hanson exposed herself as a fraud. She said she would do one thing and did another. They are getting ready to do it again. One Nation Mark II is nothing more than a political fraud.