Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

'AWU'—it cost 5,000 workers more than $400 million in lost wages over a decade. I should sit down now. I've put forward two solutions. Both of them I imagine would be unacceptable to the Australian Labor Party.

Of course, the burn on this is that the Australian Labor Party of my father's generation and of my youth was interested in workers. They were the ones who were interested in workers. They were the workers' party. I have said here before—and it's worth repeating—that my dear old dad was a devotee of the Labor Party. I have said before that he would punch his hand through his coffin lid tomorrow and mark their box, irrespective of who the candidate was. That was his and my mother's lifetime pattern of voting. But they were supporting a different Labor Party. They would not have supported a Labor Party who entered into enterprise bargaining agreements that cost 5,000 workers $400 million in lost wages over a decade. Of course, this conduct by Mr Shorten was repeated with employees of Target and Just Jeans. If you do the maths, the loss to workers through their terms and conditions, particularly around penalty rates, is probably by now in the order of $1 billion.

I will go back just to make a point on that. In 1999 the public holiday award rate for a level 1 cleaner was $36.38. That was reduced under that enterprise bargaining agreement to $16.28. They lost a clear $20 an hour. I don't want to reflect on cleaners—I myself have done a bit of that over time—but, if you want to identify a blue-collar worker who is working in not the most appealing job and who is probably lower on the socioeconomic strata than most other blue-collar workers, it would be the cleaners. How do you go to bed as a Labor man after you've reduced their public holiday award rate by $20.10? How does that work? How do you say to the workers, who have looked to that party for decades, 'Stick with us. We're the party of the people. We're the party of the workers, particularly blue collar workers and the like. Stick with us and we'll improve your terms and conditions of employment,' only to reduce them?

Let's recap on my two failed ideas. The first was thinking I'd have bipartisan support. The other was to establish a Fair Work Commission, and I must confess my ignorance to that until my staff alerted me to it. There is a Fair Work Commission that was put in place by the Australian Labor Party to be arm's length and to govern such matters. Now we hear in this place constantly their criticism of the independent commission, which they formed, because they're not happy with what's happening there. Now their alternative is, for the Australian people and Australian workers, to give Mr Shorten the top job. He'll fix this for you. He will see, in the blink of an eye, reductions in your wages, and it won't affect his sleeping patterns because he's got a long chronic history of doing just that.

Things have improved for workers in this country under this coalition government. I attach myself to some of the remarks of Senator Sterle. He was right about the incidents that we've talked about, and there's no question in my mind that there are issues around our 457 visa system that need to be tidied up, particularly in circumstances that he related. And there is exploitation of some workers under this system in agricultural industries, where the brokers who present them as a workforce treat some of them very poorly and, in fact, unlawfully. So I attach myself; I don't walk away from those remarks. I've been very vocal on it up to this point in time. I've made representations to the relevant ministers and I'm satisfied that the efforts that they have underway will eventually mitigate those circumstances.

But I've got to tell you: to have the Australian Labor Party come and start to lecture us on terms and conditions for workers in this country, when this government has provided so many more people with a job under Abbott and Turnbull—and I'm sure that will continue under Morrison, to fix an economy that was failing as a result of the legacies of the Australian Labor Party—I find it a bit rich. But I know why it's happening. I said in an earlier contribution today those opposite have got nothing else worthwhile to talk about; otherwise they wouldn't come in here with these subject matters and give us the opportunity to belt them around the ears. They've been done over twice today. It's because they've got no substantive issue that they find the government vulnerable on that we'd find difficult to defend. They've got nothing else to say, and the Australian people who are watching this—I hope they're all having a snooze and not spending their time watching the Senate—need to take note just as we have here today.