Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019—'ensuring integrity' in inverted commas! As has already been stated by a number of my colleagues, Labor strongly opposes this bill. We opposed this bill in the last term of this government and we oppose it again now. That is because this bill is again a blatant attack by this Liberal-National government on the working people of Australia and the organisations who work to protect them.

The original version of this bill was dangerous and extreme. That is why the 45th Parliament rejected it. This current version of the bill remains dangerous and extreme, and that is why the 46th Parliament should also reject it. We know that the reason that this government is bringing this bill back on for debate in the 46th Parliament is that they have remained as extreme as they ever were in relation to unions and working people, but this time they seem to have a friendlier Senate cooperating with them and being accomplices in their attacks on unions and working people.

This is what we see the Liberals and Nationals do every time they are in government. Every single time they have a little bit of power, they come after unions and they come after working people. I do not remember at any point in the election just gone the Prime Minister getting up and talking about his intention, should he be re-elected, to bring back this legislation and go after unions and go after working people. He does not have any mandate to do this, but here he is doing it again, just like every Liberal and National Party government we have ever seen try to do.

As has been observed by a number of my colleagues, it is 2007 all over again. It is 2007 and, indeed, before that, 2004 and 2005, when the Howard government, drunk on power and having a majority in the Senate for the first time in decades, decided to bring in antiworker, antiunion legislation—the so-called Work Choices legislation—to smash unions and to rip conditions and pay out of the hands of working people. And here they are at it again. The minute this government got back into office, one of the first things it wanted to do was to bring this legislation back on, just like it did after it won the 2004 election, to come after unions and come after working people.

Well, I have news for this government. When they did in 2004 and 2005, it failed. They were thrown out of office in 2007, largely on the back of that Work Choices legislation and the impacts it was going to have an unions and working people. I predict that the same will happen again, because they have not learnt the lesson that the Australian people do not want their government going after unions, going after working people, reducing their wages and reducing their pay and conditions. The Australian people do not want that, but this government will just not hear the message. Its level of arrogance, having won the last election against the odds and against all expectations, knows no bounds. So here they are again, arrogantly bringing in legislation that they did not talk about during the election campaign, that exceeds their mandate and that yet again goes after unions and working people.

As is the Orwellian tendency of this government, they have decided to name this bill the ensuring integrity bill. As we have started to learn from this government, we need to understand from the titles of their bills that what is actually proposed within the contents is exactly the opposite of what is proposed in the title. So let us talk a little bit about integrity and what ensuring integrity might look like if this government was actually sincere. Let us begin by talking about integrity in the workplace. Take just one example that is throughout the media as being absolutely rampant within the workplace—I am of course talking about wage theft.

In recent months, we continued to see example after example of employers ripping off their workers—underpaying them, not paying superannuation, paying below award rates of pay, not paying allowances and various other things that are employees' legal rights. It started with the shocking abuses of largely migrant workers by 7-Eleven, but it has continued through Domino's, Woolworths, Michael Hill Jewellers and, it seems, through every single celebrity chef in the country. Still to this day we're waiting for this government to take any serious action to rein in wage theft. Every single time Labor senators raise this matter, we're told: 'Yes, it's a priority. We'll get to it at some point. We're looking at it. We think it's a very serious issue.' But where is the legislative action from this government to do something about a genuine problem in the workplace in the form of wage theft that is affecting millions of workers in this country? We're still waiting, because it's actually not their priority; this bill that we're debating here today, going after unions and workers, is this government's priority, not making sure that Australian workers receive the pay and conditions they are legally obliged to receive.

This week I met with some young workers, members of the United Workers Union. I asked them, 'What do you think is the major issue young workers in this country are complaining about and need action taken on?' Without prompting, every single one of those young people, whether they were working in food manufacturing, hospitality or other areas covered by that union, told me the major problem that needed to be dealt with was wage theft. Every single one of them and every single one of their friends had experienced wage theft. That's a problem that this government should be dealing with. If it's actually serious about getting people's wages up, getting people what they're legally entitled to and getting this economy moving, it might do something about wage theft.

Not one of these young people was telling me that the major problem in their workplace was the odd occasion where their union might not complete paperwork correctly. The reason is that it's not a significant problem in need of legislative prioritisation by this government—but, of course, that is what this government's priority is. We are still waiting to see any serious effort by this government to tackle stagnant wages, the lowest wage growth on record in Australia, under this government. Nothing has been done about that, about wage theft or about other forms of workplace exploitation. That's one form of integrity that this government might care to actually think about.

Another example is the serial, ongoing misconduct of the largest banks in this country. Again, this government isn't serious about doing anything about banking misconduct. We remember they voted 26 times to stop a banking royal commission going ahead. That royal commission was forced upon them against their will, and they're now dragging the chain when it comes to implementing its recommendations. Even though the banking royal commission handed down its 76 recommendations a long time ago, so far only six have been implemented by this government. The rest are on the go-slow because, again, fixing banking misconduct is not a priority of this government, just like fixing wage theft is not a priority of this government; the priority of this government is smashing unions and therefore going after the workers that those unions represent.

Just in the last week we saw more evidence of misconduct in the banking industry, involving Westpac, who have been accused, by the federal government's own banking regulators, of breaking anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing laws 23 million times. Shockingly, in the process they seem to have facilitated serious crimes including child exploitation in overseas countries. Again, if this government were serious about ensuring integrity, they might want to do something about that, but, when the Prime Minister was asked about this, his response was that this was simply a matter for Westpac's board—not to mention that, despite ultimately stepping down in disgrace, their former CEO will receive still $2.68 million in his 12 months notice period for which he is being paid out. Twenty-three million breaches of the law by one of the biggest banks of this country can go largely unnoticed by the elected representatives of this government and can be left as a matter for the board, but three minor paperwork breaches by unions is enough to deregister them and disqualify their officials. We're supposed to believe the government are serious when they say this is all about treating unions and companies on an equivalent level. No-one believes that. That is absolutely ludicrous, and the fact that the government have an agenda to go after unions and working people, not serious corporate misconduct, was made plain this week.

You can't fault this government's timing. In the very week it chooses to bring on this debate about 'ensuring integrity', not only is one of the biggest banks in the country involved in serious misconduct but we also have problems yet again with ministerial integrity, involving one of the government's senior ministers, Mr Taylor. I'm glad that, when we're talking about ministerial misconduct and ministerial integrity, we've got another such person in the chamber with us right now. I'm talking, of course, about Minister Cash. Minister Cash set the benchmark for this government when it comes to lacking ministerial integrity and misconduct. Who can forget the infamous raid launched by her organisation, the Registered Organisations Commission, in response to a 'complaint' or referral from Minister Cash, about allegedly serious misconduct that had occurred in the Australian Workers Union? Despite Minister Cash's denials in estimates, we of course learned that that raid by the police was leaked to the media by staff from Minister Cash's own office; they admitted as much in the Federal Court. She's sitting here nodding, saying: 'So what? We've heard this all before.' This is actually a serious matter, Minister Cash. I know you've never taken responsibility for it. That's because you, along with all of your other ministerial colleagues, lack the integrity that you now have the hide to say unions should serve up.

When the police were investigating—and Minister Cash's office was under investigation—and considering charges for leaking this information, Minister Cash wouldn't cooperate with the police. They requested on multiple occasions that she attend an interview, but she wouldn't turn up. That's because she knew that to turn up and tell the police what had actually occurred would incriminate her and incriminate other members of the government, along with her staff. That's how much integrity we saw from Minister Cash and that's why, to this day, not one Australian person takes Minister Cash seriously whenever she opens her mouth. It doesn't matter what she says, it doesn't matter what attack she's launching on the Labor Party or unions or any other group in the country, everyone just remembers: 'Oh, that's that Minister Cash; she's the one who was involved in the police raid on union offices that was leaked to the media.' Everyone knows this minister doesn't have any integrity, and yet she and her colleagues have the hide to come in here and lecture the rest of us about the integrity of unions and working people.

As I said, you can't fault this government when it comes to timing, because, in the very week that it's trying to introduce this legislation, we have another one of its ministers, Minister Taylor, now under police investigation. That will no doubt play out in the House of Representatives today. The fact that the Prime Minister doesn't think that that is a worthy reason for one of his ministers to stand down tells you all you need to know about the integrity levels of this government. Minister Cash set the bar by having her own staff leak information about a police raid on union offices and then not cooperating with the police investigation. Minister Taylor is just following Minister Cash's lead. He's ignoring the fact that the police are investigating him, and the Prime Minister is ignoring the fact that they're investigating one of his own ministers. And the Prime Minister thinks it's okay to get on the phone with the police commissioner and have a bit of a chat with him about how the investigation is going. Are we all of a sudden living in a tin-pot dictatorship under Scott Morrison? We know he doesn't want people to have the right to protest; now he thinks it's okay for the Prime Minister of the country to get on the blower to the police commissioner and ask him about this police investigation. Are they the standards of integrity that we can expect from this government, which has the hide to bring in and debate a bill that it says is about ensuring the integrity of the union movement and working people? This government has no integrity and has no place lecturing anyone else in this country about integrity either.

The fundamental problem that the government, the Liberals and the Nationals, have when it comes to this legislation is that they simply don't understand the importance of unions in this country. Indeed, they see the word 'union' as interchangeable with the word 'criminal'. You only have to look at the public debate that has been engaged in by ministers of this government in recent months and the number of times they talk about this bill in the context of criminal union officials. It happens every single day. They see the word 'union' as interchangeable with the word 'criminal'—I know that, on many occasions, I and other members on this side have been referred to as union lawyers and union officials as if that's some kind of epithet for 'criminal' that can be thrown at people—rather than recognising what unions, and the lawyers and officials who work for them, do. They're out there every single day trying to defend working people against the latest attacks from this government and from employers that don't want to do the right thing. I've seen, over and over again, Labor candidates who have worked for unions or are members of unions referred to as 'union officials', 'union thugs', 'union this', 'union that'. It's this continuing pattern that we see from this government to delegitimise unions, to try to gradually take them out of the workplace so that employers, like the banks that we were talking about before, can get moving, unfettered, and do whatever they want to working people. That's what this government is actually about.

I am a proud union member and I have been a proud union member for my entire working career, going back to my days working in hospitality when I was paying my way through university. My parents were proud union members. Most members of my family are and were proud union members. I've got no shame whatsoever in referring to the fact that I spent a number of years of my working career working as a lawyer for unions and for working people. I was proud to do that, every single day, because it meant that every single day I was going into bat against employers who are doing the wrong thing—underpaying their workers and denying them the conditions that they were entitled to, and sending workers into unsafe conditions. I know whose side I'd rather be on in that fight. I'd rather be on the side of the unions and the working people who are trying to resist that kind of misconduct, rather than with the people we see on the other side of this chamber who are very happy, every day, to saddle up with the rogue employers who are denying working people their rights.

I remember working for workers as a so-called union lawyer, defending employees and representing workers who'd been unfairly dismissed, who'd been discriminated against in the workplace and who had been underpaid on a serial basis by employers. I remember acting for the Finance Sector Union when it tried to prevent, and successfully prevented, the Commonwealth Bank from making its entire workforce go onto individual contracts. I remember working for the Transport Workers Union as they defended owner-drivers, who were being grossly underpaid and denied all of their entitlements by big trucking companies. I remember working for the Manufacturing Workers Union and their members, when companies were going belly up—after, usually, director misconduct—and were left with no money to pay the entitlements of the staff who'd all lost their jobs. Those were good things to do. They were good, deserving people who actually deserved our support rather than more and more attacks as we are seeing from this government.

I won't go over in detail what this bill does—it has been traversed in detail by a number of other speakers—but we know that, as to the effect of this bill, all it will do is to make it harder for unions to organise and harder for unions to stand up for the rights of workers, and, therefore, harder for workers to get a fair pay rise and the conditions that they are entitled to. I will not, and this side of the chamber will not, support a bill that will leave workers without the representatives that protect them from the wage and superannuation theft and the dangerous workplaces that this government should actually be taking action on.

This bill represents a politically motivated attack on workers' ability to organise and represent workers, run their own unions and determine who leads them. Workers in this country should get to choose who leads them and represents them—not Scott Morrison, not Minister Cash, not Minister Taylor and not any other minister over on that side of the chamber who lacks the integrity that they now demand of the union movement.

I do want to mention, in passing, one aspect of this bill, which is that it intends to give even more power to the Registered Organisations Commission—and I'm of course referring to the organisation that was Minister Cash's accomplice in launching that disgraceful and now invalid raid on the Australian Workers Union. The Registered Organisations Commission is now a body that is so thoroughly politicised and discredited over its AWU raid scandal that it should actually be abolished. It should be deregistered. The Registered Organisations Commission is the group that should be deregistered, not the unions that it continually goes after. Instead, what this government wants to do is to give this disgraced, partisan body even more power.

In conclusion, I was going to talk about evidence that came out at the hearings that I attended on this bill in Brisbane, but unfortunately time doesn't permit that. I do want to reflect, in closing, on what this bill is really all about. It is another attempt by this government to do just what they did after the 2004 election, when they overreached with a friendly Senate and introduced the Work Choices legislation that ripped off unions and working people; they're at it again with this bill now. What this bill is really all about is taking out the unions that protect working people so that the government can then go after the people they really want to get, who are the working people of this country. This government is sitting by, while we see wages growing at the lowest level we have ever seen in Australian history, while we are seeing penalty rates cut as a result of the government's inaction and while we see wage theft running rife across almost every sector of the economy. While all of those things are happening, the government does nothing, because their priority is to go after unions and take them out of the way so that they can then go after the working people, who are the real targets of the Liberals and the Nationals.

The government's cover was actually blown yesterday in question time when Minister Payne was asked questions about what the government's plans were for its so-called IR reform. Last week the Minister for Industrial Relations flagged an intention to bring in new industrial laws, and yesterday Minister Payne was given every opportunity to rule out watering down unfair dismissal laws or changing the way enterprise agreements are assessed. The minister would not do that yesterday. We know that this bill is about taking out unions so the government can come after working people in the next few months. (Time expired)