Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill. This is a bad law that must be opposed in full. This morning I hosted a group of young workers who had come to parliament to talk to politicians about issues facing young people in workplaces all over Australia. Rosie, Rachel, James, Michael and Maryanne all talked about the hopelessness and powerlessness being felt by young workers around the country. The No. 1 issue they talked about was wage theft, and they rightly asked: why isn't the government taking any action on wage theft? How is it that employers can get away with not paying them thousands of dollars, but if they were to steal from their employer it would be a criminal offence? One employee who we spoke to today was owed $36,000 from her employer.

It reminded me of when I was a young worker. I started out in retail and hospitality jobs. I would take any job I could get, and the jobs you could do on nights and on weekends were even better. But at one of my first jobs I got handed in Australian workplace agreement under Howard's Work Choices laws. When the Howard government won the 2004 election, it also won a majority in the Senate. After the election, Prime Minister Howard told reporters:

… I want to assure the Australian people that the government will use its majority in the new Senate very carefully, very wisely and not provocatively.

And yet, just over a year later, on 10 November 2005, the Special Minister of State at the time, Senator Eric Abetz, introduced Work Choices into the Senate. The same Senate which Prime Minister Howard had told Australians would not be used provocatively had been used defiantly to push through laws destroying the rights of workers all across the country.

In 2005 the Senate allowed a law to be passed that made it easier to sack workers, that broke down our collective bargaining system and that stripped away the basic right of representation. It let down workers, especially young workers. I will never forget what it felt like to be handed an AWA, to be made to feel hopeless and powerless against my employer. We should never forget that the Morrison government, the Liberal and National parties, are the parties of Work Choices. That is why they are pushing through these laws today. It is about ideology, not policy. It is about attacking working people. It is about taking away the representation that stops workers from feeling hopeless and powerless. It is the start of the grand old march towards Work Choices 2.0 as the government unashamedly boasts about their plans to overhaul our award system.

Senators have the opportunity to right the wrong of Work Choices, to be the check and balance that Australia expects, to stop bad laws, to stop government overreach, to stop this government from hurting working Australians. Even with amendments, this bill allows the disqualification of union officials or the deregistration of entire unions for minor workplace breaches. The bill still allows the minister or anyone with sufficient interest to apply to deregister a union or disqualify a person from office, allowing unprecedented government overreach into a pillar of our democratic society. The bill still gives sweeping new powers to the politicised and discredited Registered Organisations Commission, which just a few weeks ago was found by the Federal Court to have acted unlawfully in its pursuit of a union. The bill still imposes a new test on union amalgamations, giving the government the power to override the democratic wishes of union members, even though amalgamations are already heavily regulated. And, still, many of these new standards and regulations being imposed on unions through the bill have no corporate equivalents. It sets up one rule for unions, which protect the interests of working people, and one rule for businesses that are guilty of gross misconduct or even criminality. This is what the bill does. No matter how much you amend it, no matter how much you argue for it, throwing out confected statistics or quotes from judgements by government appointed commissioners, it cannot make the effects of this bill any less unfair, unprecedented or unfounded.

But I also want to talk about what this bill won't do. The truth is that this bill won't create a single job in my home state of Queensland. It won't create any apprenticeships. It won't see wages rise for workers, who keep seeing profits going up but their wages staying the same. It won't stop further casualisation or automation of jobs—just ask BHP workers in Central Queensland. The bill won't make workplaces safer. It won't stop one death. The bill won't help workers in the hospitality industry get their penalty rates back. It will do nothing to help workers. It won't make the future more secure for Australia's young workers. It will put them on the other side of bargaining tables alone, unable to bargain, hopeless and powerless. The Senate cannot allow this to happen again.

I attended the hearings in Canberra and Brisbane that the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee held on this bill. I thank all of the witnesses who appeared and made submissions. At those hearings we heard from unions, workers and legal experts about the deficiencies of this bill. The dissenting report, which I have signed, set out those deficiencies and the evidence provided in some detail. One of the major concerns raised during the hearings on this bill was the chilling effect these laws would have on legitimate union activity. As Labor senators explained, the significantly expanded grounds and new standing provisions would ultimately weaken the power of working people. The bill would have a chilling effect on workplace bargaining and would see union resources diverted towards defending a union and its members rather than being used to advocate and bargain for better wages and conditions.

This chilling effect is the real purpose of this bill. But what will it look like in practice? What will it look like in workplaces all across the country? If the resources of unions are diverted, if the consequence of taking strike action could be disqualification of a member or even deregistration of a union, individual members and officials will be curtailed from performing their legal duties. Unions will not be able to perform the important role that they play on worksites all across the country. The most important part of that role for any union official is to ensure that workers come home safe at the end of each day, unharmed and alive. Union officials ensure that, when the workday stops, every father is returned home, every son walks through their door and no woman ever leaves a worksite worse off.

In the past year there have been 130 deaths at work. That figure is going up when it should be going down. In Far North Queensland we've had two significant workplace deaths that have left families and communities shattered. A worker died last night on the job in Central Queensland. Of all the statistics and numbers that senators opposite will quote during this debate, that should be the most important one. As our dissenting report sets out, this bill will further restrict the ability of unions to take collective action in circumstances where safety is in serious doubt. The threat of prosecution, disqualification of an office holder or deregistration of a union will create a situation where workers and their representatives might think twice before taking action. That is unacceptable in Australia.

I want to provide a real-life example of how this might play out. It shows the absurdity of these proposed laws and how they have the potential to put lives of workers at risk by stopping legitimate union behaviour. A few years ago, when I was just getting my start as a trainee lawyer, representing workers who had been unfairly dismissed at work or underpaid, I worked on a case that was being appealed by the Fair Work Commission. It has always stuck with me because I've always wondered what I would have felt like being one of the workers involved—what I would have done in the same situation.

The workers were working on a site in Central Queensland for Bechtel. A substance called perlite was being used on the site. It is described as a sand-like substance, and when it's heated up to a thousand degrees it's pushed through a funnel. It is classified as nontoxic, but it can also be an irritant. One day on site a soft, white dust filled the air. Some of the workers started experiencing side effects—itchy eyes and sore throats. They had to seek medical attention. The union delegates on site took the matter very seriously. The delegates on site knew from their union training and industry knowledge that dust was a serious issue and had deadly health consequences.

Each year in Australia between 700 and 800 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos related disease. In 2018, 699 people died from this rare and aggressive form of cancer. Most recently, a new epidemic has seen the rates of the lung disease silicosis, caused by breathing in dust containing crystalline silica, rise. Last year in Queensland, 98 people contracted the disease and 15 people died from it. It is incurable.

The delegates and workers on the site met, and they decided that they needed to stop work. They decided that there was an imminent risk to their health and safety. Whether it was protected or unprotected action would be determined by a legal definition about whether there was an imminent risk to their health and safety. The company applied to the Fair Work Commission to seek an order to stop that action and make the workers go back to work. A rushed hearing was held and there was no time for industrial officers representing unions to prepare evidence about safety concerns. When the hearing was held, the workers had already returned to work. The order prevented workers from engaging in industrial action and would stay in force for three months—this is, the order that the commission made against the workers. While the order was in place, no industrial action could be taken. A breach of that order would be a civil remedy provision breach. So, if the workers went back to site the next day and a cloud of dust filled the air again, they would not be able to stop work because of this order.

Under this bill that we are talking about today, that breach would be grounds for disqualification of a union official or a deregistration of a union. I've often wondered what I would have done if it were me watching my colleagues head off for medical treatment. What would we do in this place if white dust started filling the air? We would stop work. We would take action. Of course, those workers did exactly the same thing. Safety is serious and the stakes are very, very high. If the crossbench senators are looking to get the balance right when it comes to this legislation, they should consider that, when it comes to workers' safety, that balance should always be weighted in the favour of workers' safety. It should always come before profits or productivity. There is no 50-50 balance in this situation. Workers should always come first, and under this legislation they don't.

This legislation is an attack on working people, but there is no doubt that the government will not stop here. The next piece of legislation that they bring into this chamber to streamline our so-called complex awards, to do the bidding of the varied businesses that owe $500 million to Australian workers, will also be an attack on working people. This government is the political party of Work Choices. They are the same party as 'no cuts to the ABC' and 'no cuts to SBS'. They are the same party that let penalty rates of 700,000 workers get cut. They are the same party that won't take action on wage theft and won't take any action on the rot of labour hire in regional Queensland.

Liberal and National senators have done a lot of talking about unions in here and out there, calling nurses and teachers unions thugs. But here's the thing: Liberals talk about unionism as though they read about it in a textbook. They speak without any firsthand experience of the sweat on the brows; the long, hard fights; the despair of holding a parent who just lost their son on a worksite; or being told hundreds of your members have just been made redundant by text message. For all their talk about unions, they don't talk about how it feels to save someone's job or win a pay increase for the lowest paid workers or see the manufacturing sector return to regional towns, because they wouldn't know. They haven't won those fights, but the union movement has. The Liberals weren't there to protect minimum wages when unions were. The Liberals weren't there to fight for public holidays, but unions were there every step of the way. The Liberals weren't there to fight for Medicare, but unions were. The Liberals weren't there when unions were fighting for asbestos victims or for 7-Eleven workers or for women to get equal pay. The Liberals can't tell you what it feels like to fight for these things, because these are not the things that they fight for. This is the debate that they want to have: a fight against unions, against working people. Nothing has changed.

While these debates have always shown the true colours of the senators sitting opposite, they also bring out the best in the Labor Party. Labor is unashamedly a party of working people for working people. Labor's deep roots with the trade union movement aren't something that Liberals opposite could ever understand or ever be able to shame us into repenting or extinguishing. Our collectivism is a fire that they can't blow out, even as they huff and puff over there. They are full of wind without any spark. Labor stands with every apprentice, electrician, plumber, construction worker, teacher, nurse, ambo, scientist or fitter and turner who unashamedly calls themselves a union member.

During the third reading debate on the Work Choices bill, Labor Senator Chris Evans said this to the government. I want to repeat his words tonight. He said:

You will win the vote … but you won't win the argument … we will fight you all the way to the next election because you are wrong.

You're unfair and your bill is un-Australian.

We are proud of our relationship with the trade union movement. We are proud of defending workers and we will keep on doing it. You may think history is with you, but mark down 2 December 2005, because it is the beginning of the end of this government. All you have spoken about tonight is ideology. The date 2 December 2005 was the beginning of the end of the Howard government. Workers, including young workers, marched in the streets, some for the very first time, to fight for their rights at work. It was, for me, the very first time that I stood up and felt that collectivism. I marched in the streets, and that journey has led me here tonight, to fight for the next generation of workers and to fight against this rotten antiworker legislation.

I want to end this speech tonight by talking about the young workers that I met today and what they want from this government. We know that it is tough right now for young workers. Nationwide, since the Liberals were elected six years ago, Australia has 150,000 fewer apprentices and trainees. In regional Queensland we have lost 17,000 apprentices and trainees since 2013. Youth unemployment continues to skyrocket at 12.4 per cent. It is even higher if you live in regional or remote communities. The cost of living is higher, yet wages are staying the same. Seven hundred thousand workers in the hospitality and retail sector have had their Sunday and public holiday wages cut. Australians are currently owed $500 million due to underpayment, because wage theft is rife in our community. Five hundred million dollars is owed to workers, and this government is doing nothing about it.

The future for young people under this government is uncertain. Their pathway to a secure, full-time job is unknown. The government's anti-union bill won't create a single new job. They don't have a plan to fix youth unemployment or increase apprenticeships in regional Queensland, where we desperately need them. If this bill passes with the help of the crossbench, we should mark this day down—26 November 2019—as the day that the Senate turned its back on workers.