Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The government has called the bill that we are debating tonight the 'ensuring integrity bill'. I refuse to call it that. It's the 'union-busting bill'. It's the 'attacking workers bill'. It's the 'looking after your corporate mates bill'. Integrity has been defined as making sure that the things you say and the things you do are in alignment. So, as we debate this bill, it's worth examining what the coalition government says about integrity and what it actually does. Are their words and their actions in alignment? Spoiler alert! As this debate has made very clear, it's as clear as day that they are not.

It is striking that today, as we have been debating this Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, there has been a story in the news about Westpac, one of Australia's largest banks, failing to obey anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism-financing laws—a failure that allowed a Westpac customer to make payments to someone in the Philippines who was later arrested for child sex trafficking. But that's just one allegation. As others have also told us here today, it was one of 23 million—yes, 23 million!—breaches of the law involving more than $11 billion in transactions.

This case that has been brought by AUSTRAC comes after the royal commission we've already had which investigated the banks' behaviour. We've all heard so much about how the banks have let down their customers and the community, having devastating impacts on people's lives, and about exploitation by insurance companies, which are owned by the banks. We've heard about people being mired in paperwork on life insurance claims and denied access to money that is rightfully theirs.

You would think that, if the government were truly concerned about integrity, these things would have inspired them to act. You might think that, hearing the damage that these financial institutions have done to our communities, the coalition would want to change things for the better—but no. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a royal commission, and many of the reforms that were recommended by the royal commission haven't been implemented. And we haven't heard anything from the coalition about deregistering Westpac. The CEO has resigned, but the institution remains. And they will offend again—it's only a matter of time—unless we take meaningful action. But this coalition government refuses to do that.

Then, on the same day as this is happening, we have the Prime Minister directly calling the New South Wales police about an investigation into the behaviour of one of his cabinet ministers. Does that sound like integrity? Does it sound fair that he can just call up and ask the head of the New South Wales police about an investigation? Does that sound like the Prime Minister is acting with integrity? Why is Angus Taylor under investigation? Because there are unanswered questions about how a document with wildly inaccurate figures went from his office to a journalist, to attack another politician. Does that sound like integrity? And that's before we even start talking about the grasslands inquiry, where property that Angus Taylor part-owned was under investigation for breaches of our environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. And somehow, instead of acting with integrity, the government decided that they needed to review how our environmental laws interact with farms like that particular one part-owned by Angus Taylor. The compliance case resulting from this investigation hasn't been resolved, years later. Does that sound like integrity? No.

What is under attack today isn't any of those things. The coalition will not act to ensure integrity amongst financial institutions or amongst its ministers. Instead, it's going after unions. That's the coalition's real agenda. After all, this is the government that had a royal commission into unions that was a politically motivated witch-hunt. This is the government that set up the Registered Organisations Commission, which undertook investigations into the AWU—investigations which were found by the Federal Court last month to be based on suspicion and not to be based on reasonable grounds.

Unions are a cornerstone of our democracy, and they operate on a fundamentally different basis from corporations. Corporations exist to create profits for shareholders. Unions, on the other hand, exist to represent workers and to give them a voice, to advance the interests of their members, and, in doing so, to help all workers. For the benefit of the government, here are some of the things that unions do: they advise people about their rights and entitlements at work; they help address the power imbalance between workers and their employers; and they work to ensure that the lowest paid get a decent wage and a decent quality of life. We can thank unions for penalty rates and for shorter working weeks. We can thank unions for annual leave. These conditions weren't just handed down by gracious corporations; they were hard battles fought by unions, and these are the things that are under attack by this government. By making it harder for unions to operate effectively, this government is attacking the most vulnerable people in our society. It's seeking to reverse gains that have been made over decades.

This government demonises unions, and this legislation will open up unions to harassment, to interruption of their operations, and to being swamped by unwarranted legal action designed to try and destroy them. We know why: because, when workers and unions build their collective voice and collective power as an integral part of our democracy, they have the capacity to change the way this country is run. They challenge the power held by big corporations and governments who are acting to protect the power of those corporations. This government finds that prospect frightening, and so, to prevent it, it is acting to introduce laws that are incompatible with Australia's International Labour Organization commitments and will impose standards to which there are absolutely no corporate or political equivalents.

In contrast to the government's demonising of unions and union members as unlawful thugs, the average union member is a 46-year-old female nurse, much like the nurses that I met who were here in parliament earlier this week. A typical union worker is someone like my friend Huong, who works for the National Union of Workers and works with migrant women, originally from Vietnam, who speak very little English and work under incredibly difficult conditions in the textile, manufacturing and horticultural industries. Huong works with these women. She helps these women to stand up for their rights at work, to stand up against sexual harassment and to make sure that they get paid the wages that they are due, that they get to take the breaks they are entitled to at work and that the conditions that they are working in are safe. That's what your average union worker is doing. That's the type of work that unions do. A typical union worker is someone like the representatives from the CSIRO Staff Association who I met earlier this week, advocating for increased resources for science in Australia so that our talented postdoctoral researchers don't need to go overseas to find work because the jobs to undertake important research for the future wellbeing of our country no longer exist in Australia. That's the type of work that unions are doing right across the country.

We think of Australia as the land of the fair go, but if this bill passes we will become more like the United States of America, a place where giant corporations squash the little people and people have to struggle, juggling two, three or four jobs and working 50 or 60 hours a week. We're better than that here in Australia. We believe in a decent day's work to earn a decent day's pay. Yet this is the legislation that this government is introducing—legislation that will make it harder for unions to operate and harder to protect the rights and conditions of ordinary workers, ordinary people, at a time when minimum wages have fallen to a point where they are no longer a guarantee of financial security, when wage theft is rampant and when we have overworked, underpaid temporary overseas workers who are both being exploited themselves and undercutting the jobs and conditions of other workers in the country. It's a time when penalty rates have been cut. It's a time when big corporations are making record profits whilst the government is helping employers use labour laws to cut wages, conditions and workplace rights.

This is, in turn, impacting upon our society. In turn, when people are stressed about money and time, that makes everything harder. It is harder for us to build communities and connect with people around us, harder for us to campaign on the issues that we believe in and fight for the things that matter most, harder to protect our environment and to take action on climate change, and harder to stand up for the rights of First Nations people, LGBTIQ+ people and workers everywhere.

The coalition is attacking unions, attacking workers and tearing apart the fabric of our society. We must stand against this bill. We've got a different, better vision of Australia. The Greens have a vision of Australia as a country where we do all get a fair go and where the government stands up for people, not corporations. This bill is fundamentally unfair. There's a complete lack of integrity in the coalition's behaviour. While corporations are running rampant and ministers are not held accountable, the coalition are seeking to attack unions again. If the government were really committed to acting with integrity, they would be withdrawing this bill and they would be standing up for transparency, for accountability and for protecting the wellbeing and workplace rights of ordinary Australians instead of the interests of their corporate mates.

We're almost at the end of this second reading debate. There has been so much debate heard over the last two days, but it's not too late. If you are really concerned about integrity, it's not too late—you could withdraw this bill. I don't see it happening, but that's what would need to happen if we were to truly ensure integrity in our legislation and proposed bills in Australia today.