Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It appears to me that the minister or the government wilfully misunderstands the problem around wage theft. There are much bigger examples emerging of wage theft. It's not because the government and the regulator have become more effective at discovering them. It's because the government's approach on industrial relations has emboldened wage theft as a business model. It has deliberately weakened the capacity of unions to do that work. And that work has been, traditionally, the role of trade unions in the Australian economy. It's traditionally work that's occurred, in many cases, unseen and unmeasured.

It is true that over the course of the last two or three decades the role of the public sector in that area has become more significant. There is a real contrast, I reckon. This is the one area where the government wants to in-source the capability and kill the capability of the non-government sector to do that kind of social justice work because there's a deliberate political strategy of undermining the capacity of trade unions to do that work. That is in real contrast to what the Howard government did, which was about outsourcing public work dealing with employment services that was done expertly in the public sector to organisations who had no capacity or expertise to do that work. They effectively ruined the Australian employment services sector when they did it.

I don't want to spend much more time on the James Hardie dispute. I think the reason that the minister hasn't responded to that is that it's such a crippling example of hypocrisy in corporate Australia and hypocrisy from the government. The AMWU secretary Paul Bastian, who led that dispute, is an old friend of mine. He said:

If Scott Morrison's union busting bill is passed, the delegates, organisers and officials that campaigned for justice for sufferers of asbestos-diseases could be excluded from the leadership of our union and our union could be deregistered.

If these laws had existed at the time, there's a real chance James Hardie could have successfully used them to tie up our union and our officials in costly and time-consuming legal actions in an attempt to defeat us. That would have affected not only our union, but the many Australians suffering from asbestos diseases.

Minister, when you characterised the provisions of the act that limit the basis upon which unlawful industrial action can be used as a ground for deregistration of a union or in dealing with an individual's capacity to serve as an officer in a union you talked about obstruction and about unlawful industrial action that prevents, hinders or interferes with the activity of an employer or affects the safety, health and welfare of the public. Consider the James Hardie dispute and consider the action of those brave builders and labourers who stood up to corporate interests and corrupt interests in the city of Sydney to defend public heritage and public housing. They absolutely prevented, hindered and interfered with the activity of an employer. That was the point. In the James Hardie dispute, workplaces stopped in work time. It prevented employer activity. It hindered the effectiveness of factories all over Western Sydney. I know; I was one of the people who organised it. It absolutely was unlawful action designed to do all of those things, to put pressure on corporate Australia, put pressure on the government and put pressure on one of the most miserable pea-hearted Prime Ministers this country has ever seen, the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who slandered Bernie Banton, who worked with us to lead that dispute. It was absolutely the point of that industrial action.

What your legislation does, doesn't it, is discourage that kind of democratic union action? Sure, it's unlawful. Sure, people face the consequences of making that democratic decision to take on their employer or to attend a protest in work time. We've got to work through the democratic consequences of that. But they make a democratic decision to do it and the country is finer for it. Our democracy is stronger for it. The Sydney skyline is better for it. And there are thousands and thousands of asbestos mesothelioma sufferers and their families who are profoundly better off for the kind of industrial action that your legislation, the legislation that you've come to this place to try and defend, is trying to discourage. That's what it's all about. Why is there a double standard here? Why is that kind of democratic action discouraged, and what will be the impact? What's the chilling effect of that going to be upon Australian democracy?