Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendments and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. The bill doesn't really ensure integrity, though, does it? So there's a bit of a misnomer in the title. I think we all know that the government doesn't really want to ensure integrity in any sphere, because, if it did, surely it would bring on a bill to set up an integrity commission—one that might cover the activities of politicians, public servants or business leaders that seek to influence decision-makers, much like the bill that this chamber actually passed a few months ago and that's now sitting on the House books and probably won't get a look-in, because this government doesn't really want to ensure integrity, does it? It just wants to kick its political opponents.

This whole bill is about demonising the bodies that represent workers, that stand up for all of our rights, that, in fact, delivered us a 30-hour work week and that gave us weekends. I'm a proud union member. I have been for a very long time. The Australian Services Union are the union to which I belong, and I'm grateful for the work that they've done to stick up for workers in that sector and I'm grateful for the fact that we have weekends and 38-hour work weeks. I know most of us in here often don't get to experience those things, but unions have worked for those outcomes.

What we've seen today and, in fact, what we've seen all week is the government messing with the Senate timetable to ram this bill through when what it actually, in my view, should be concerning itself with is not only restoring integrity and establishing an anticorruption body that actually stops corruption and genuinely restores integrity but also looking at workplace health and safety. I'm from Queensland, and we saw media reports in the last couple of days that found that not one, not two, but seven workers have been killed on mine sites or quarry sites in the last 18 months. We all know that workplace health and safety conditions aren't strong enough and we know they're not strongly enforced. That's exactly why we need strong unions: to protect workers' working conditions.

I am embarrassed that this government, rather than dealing with, say, national industrial manslaughter laws, is instead wanting to attack unions that are simply trying to protect workers and make sure they can go home safe at night. I had a motion to move today that noted those tragic, avoidable deaths and noting that this government, rather than demonising and attacking unions, maybe should turn its mind to national industrial manslaughter laws, but we didn't even get to motions today because this government is ramming through this particular bill. In fact, we haven't got to a lot of other business this week, again, because this government wants to ram through this bill and it just wants to attack it political opponents. I'm embarrassed and I think the people that are working on those sites and ordinary working people will be outraged.

This is a flagrant attack. If you really want to restore integrity then why are you attacking one particular sector—and a sector that represents workers, to boot? If you really want to ensure integrity, stop taking corporate donations from big business: $100 million since 2012. Policies for sale, access for sale and cushy jobs when you leave this parliament—that's the lack of integrity that this chamber should be addressing. That is exactly why we have managed to cobble together enough support not from this government but from the other people in the chamber to pass a bill to set up a national integrity commission, an anticorruption body, a federal ICAC or whatever you want to call it. We passed that bill a few months ago. As I said before, it hasn't seen the light of day in the House of Representatives, because this government does not want to ensure integrity. It actually just wants to demonise workers and crack down on unions. This is the government that brought us Work Choices. This is a government that has cut penalty rates. This is a government that turns a blind eye to underpayment of wages by its big business donors. This is not a level playing field, folks.

If you, the government, want to ensure integrity, why don't you start actually addressing those flagrant breaches of the law and why don't you crack down on that dodgy behaviour? I know those people give you money. It shouldn't actually determine your policy decisions. That's corruption. That's policy for sale. That's why we need an integrity commission—to regulate the activities of who can buy what in this place. We don't think that any of us should be for sale. We don't think that money should be having an influence on the decisions that get taken in this chamber or any other place. We think that the public interest—the interests of the community and the planet—should be what's driving the decisions that we all take collectively in these chambers.

But, no, money talks in this joint, and so we see massive corporate tax cuts and massive corporate donations. We see stagnant wages and we see wage theft. We see penalty rates cut. And we see an attack on unions in that context, where big employers and big corporates are getting to write their own rules, and this government is dancing to their tune. It's embarrassing, and it is actually making workplaces less safe.

There were seven people in Queensland on mine sites and quarries who did not deserve to not be able to return to their families one evening. This government is doing absolutely nothing about that. It is making workplaces less safe by attacking the very bodies that stand up for the rights of workers to be able to be treated fairly in workplaces, to be not discriminated against and to go home without losing a limb or losing their life. Just when you think this mob can't find a new low, they manage to find one. It is breaking the nation's collective heart.

So we will sit here late tonight. They have been doing their little deals with the crossbench to try to get this through. They have passed an hours motion so that in about 12 minutes time we will just go bam, bam, bam on the votes and we won't be able to debate this anymore. The rest of the nation is actually scratching its head, thinking, 'Why do we pay them to behave like this?'