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

John Lloyd, a man who has been a professional union buster, a man who has spent his life trying to stop workers getting decent wages and decent conditions, who was a hero of the coalition, who was a member of the HR Nicholls Society, who was an active participant and employee of the Institute of Public Affairs, has finally left public life and not before time. He has left public life in ignominy, in disgrace, doing what he always did—trying to undermine workers' wages and conditions and doing the bidding of this rabble of a coalition government.

This is a man who has spent his life moving from state government to federal government, attacking workers' rights in this country. This is a man who ended up as the Public Service Commissioner. I've seen various figures of up to about $700,000 a year appointed by the coalition in reward for doing the bidding of the coalition, a reward for continuing to attack the trade union movement and workers in this country. Good riddance to John Lloyd.

This is typical of this coalition. They appoint their apparatchiks. They appoint their political mates. They appoint former advisers to what are supposedly independent, public organisations. They then use them to deliver their agenda within the statutory authorities that are supposedly independent. John Lloyd never had an independent bone in his body—never. It was simply the coalition's reward for services attacking working people. This is a guy who got an award from the HR Nicholls Society, the Charles Copeman Award. What did he get that award for? Basically, it was for screwing workers. That's the bottom line. This guy, a member of the HR Nicholls Society, never gave up his involvement with the HR Nicholls Society and never gave up his involvement with the Institute of Public Affairs.

Do you remember Charles Copeman? Charles Copeman, for those who haven't been around long enough, was the businessman who said, 'Workers should come to work scared every day.' That's what he said. So it wasn't unusual, I would think, for John Lloyd to be given that award, because that was his modus operandi: 'Workers should be scared when they come to work. Workers should kowtow to the boss. Workers should have no industrial rights. Workers should be in almost slave-like conditions for the boss, do everything the boss wants and have no capacity to act in their own interests.' That's what this guy was about, yet he was constantly given key positions by coalition governments, state and federal. He was a professional union attack dog; that's what this guy was. He ended up in disgrace.

When John Lloyd was appointed, I said at the time that he would set the scene for industrial confrontation that would reduce Public Service morale and productivity. I wasn't Nostradamus. You didn't need to be too smart to know that that's what this guy would do. I said, 'He's an IPA pin-up boy, an extreme ideologue.' There's no doubt that that's what he did. He went on to say that workers can't be guaranteed job security, but this guy was given job security and $700,000 pay cheques by the coalition. This is the modus operandi of this mob.

Remember, it's almost 12 months to the day since Senator Cash sat in Senate estimates and, on five occasions, misled the Senate. Since then, she's been hiding behind Federal Police investigations—probably the longest Federal Police investigation I can remember—into a serious breach of the law in the Public Service. It has been going for 12 months. If anyone from the Federal Police is listening in, where is this report?

Senator Cash, in her previous ministerial appointment, was up to her neck with John Lloyd before he got chucked out. Senator Abetz was the guy who appointed John Lloyd. And we know that John Lloyd was trouble for working people in this country. That's all he ever was: trouble for working people. On many occasions he emailed the IPA and provided commentary to the IPA. What he ended up doing was resigning in absolute disgrace. He had to resign in disgrace because he had not acted in the strong traditions of the Public Service. He never was going to do that.

Under this rabble of a coalition government, you have mates getting put into key positions in statutory, so-called independent bodies and doing the bidding of the coalition—the Registered Organisations Commission for one, the Fair Work Ombudsman for two, the ABCC for three, the Public Service Commission for four. This is what this lot are about. They misuse their power. They are no better than some of the worst governments in the world when it comes to this. They are just awful. John Lloyd gladly did their bidding and gladly defended them. At one stage, he was a mate of the commissioner for the ABCC, Nigel Hadgkiss. Remember him? He was another appointment by this coalition who, again, had to resign in disgrace, ignominiously, from his position. That's what happens when you appoint ideologues. That's what happens when you appoint your mates to statutory positions and then use them to attack working people in this country.

John Lloyd should have gone through a full process of investigation into what he did. But what did he do? He took the coward's way out and he resigned. He never had a backbone, this guy. He was always good at attacking working people, always good at telling workers that they should have no job security, when he got 700 grand a year from his mates in the coalition. I have been trying to hold these people to account—both Hadgkiss and Lloyd—for the 10 years I've been in the Senate. And I've got to tell you, it is really good that I've seen both of them off. I'm still here and they are gone.