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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Jobs and Innovation (Senator Cash) to a question without notice asked by Senator Cameron today relating to the annual wage review undertaken by the Fair Work Commission.

Today I had the fortune to listen to the secretary of the ACTU, Sally McManus, and the misfortune to listen to the discredited Minister Cash, an absolutely discredited minister, a minister who should do the right thing and simply resign from the frontbench. This is a minister who presided over an absolute mess in her previous portfolios. This is a minister who does not care about the wages, conditions and rights of ordinary working families in this country. This is a minister who sets out constantly to attack working people, attack workers' wages and attack penalty rates. It's an outrageous position supported by every one of the rabble that sits across this place—every one of them. It is an absolute rabble of a government, a government who would rather give $65 billion worth of tax cuts to their mates in the banks than look after the penalty rates and the working conditions of ordinary workers in this country. They are an absolute disgrace.

But it's not just these sorts of attacks that we see taking place; we also see this government and this discredited Minister Cash using her agencies to attack the trade union movement and to run political attacks on her political opponents. We have seen that happen constantly with this minister. The other night I saw a BBC Panorama program called Taking on Putin. The BBC reporter was John Sweeney. He was showing the use by the Putin government of government agencies to attack their political opponents. Well, what you see here with Minister Cash is the agency that she set up, the ROC, being used to attack her political opponents. We also see the Fair Work Ombudsman and the ABCC being used to attack her political opponents. This government would sit nicely with the Putin administration in the USSR. They would be lovely there with the Russians, because they would fit in nicely. Using government agencies to attack your political opponents is just outrageous.

Minister Cash is completely discredited due to her failure to deal with any of the questions that were asked of her today. We asked her whether she would make a submission to the Fair Work Commission to defend workers in the hair and beauty industry who rely on penalty rates. She just wouldn't answer the question. She wouldn't answer the question, because she's not capable of answering the question or to have a submission prepared to actually support workers that are doing it tough. Yet we've got these organisations going in arguing for cutbacks to workers' wages, workers' penalty rates and workers' conditions, supported by this rabble of a government that is on its last legs. It is a decaying, dying government with a weak Prime Minister and ministers in this place that would use agencies to attack working people and working people's wages and conditions.

It's an outrageous proposition that a minister can't come in here and be honest and accurate in terms of the questions asked. She was asked again: 'Is the government's only plan to help struggling Australian workers this $65 billion tax cut?' They are relying on trickle-down economics that haven't worked anywhere else in the world. We heard the report from the President about the cleaners in this place, who do a great job and who deserve decent rates of pay and decent conditions. What was one of this government's first acts? To cut the wages of some of the lowest paid people in this place: the cleaners. They cut the wages of the cleaners—and I bet they'll do it again, because they don't care about workers, they don't care about the rights of workers and they don't care about workers' living standards. They are a disgrace. (Time expired)