Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with Senator Farrell. The minister has been fairly complete in her answers, but, listening carefully to her answers, someone listening to this debate could conclude that if you're a company director and you're found by the Fair Work Ombudsman to have not paid an employee correctly because you've misclassified them or the Fair Work Commission has ordered you to pay some money or the ATO has found that you haven't paid superannuation, the end result after five years is zero—zero return for the employee. Yet, if you are a union official out there trying to have a go and get some things fixed up, the end result is that you're fined, you're fined and you're fined, and this legislation would be attempting to stop you being a union official if you are fined three times or deregistered if you forget to put your paperwork in for $1,000, with a $21,000 fine and the like. If you're a company director and you choose not to obey the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman or the Australian Taxation Office, there is zero penalty. That's what I heard, Minister: there is zero penalty. The Attorney-General is looking at banning people from being company directors were they to do that or other such things, but at the moment there is zero. The priority is registered organisations actively trying to get those situations fixed on a daily and hourly basis.

But I want to return to the really important issue, which the minister didn't take up: if there is a bona fide safety issue on a worksite which involves an unsafe vehicle which is going to operate on a public road and jeopardise the safety of everyone travelling on that road, and if workers, heaven forbid, take action and say, 'Look, you're not going to send that truck out with one of our labour hire people or one of our casuals, because we know from yesterday's experience with an employee driver that it's unsafe,' or if they get together in a group and say,' Hang on, we're not going to work until you fix that truck or give us another truck,' 'illegal action' is what it's called. If their organisation is involved, officials of that organisation are also involved in illegal action. Where are the bona fide safety issues in transport or, dare I say, on building sites? Where does the legislation give a carve-out for the appropriate and prudent treatment of people who are acting in the best interests of the whole community, particularly in respect of transport? If a bus doesn't have brakes, it shouldn't have schoolchildren on it. If a truck doesn't have brakes, it shouldn't be coming down the Adelaide Hills. We have two court cases in recent memory in Adelaide where an employer has been found not to have been diligent in maintaining vehicles and to have been sending out ill-trained people or people with not enough competency in those vehicles. One of the employers got 12 years jail. The jury and the judge thought his attitude was so bad that it was worthy of 12 years jail. So in transport particularly, Minister, with bona fide safety issues, how do we do it under your regime?