Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Watt says, this is shameful. Last year, 16,000 of our older Australians died waiting for home care. Let's pause to recognise what that means: 16,000 people died whilst waiting for the care they deserve. Working Australians are suffering under the worst wages growth since records began, and Australian workers are experiencing unprecedented wage theft, grappling with insecure work and facing increasing casualisation and fragmentation of work. One in five workers in retail, construction, health care, accommodation, and food service industries has been a victim of wage theft. Under this government, almost two million Australians are either looking for work or looking for more work.

But this government doesn't have a plan. So much for the Prime Minister's other mantra—'If you have a go, you get a go'—because it's not true. It's just not true. Instead of supporting working Australians, this government spent the past week trying to ram through a political attack, with their so-called ensuring integrity bill, on workers' ability to get together, run their union and determine who leads them. Their priority was an attack on nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers and their ability to organise for better pay and conditions. And we know that this was just the start.

There's Mr Porter's IR review. Do you know what it's about? Reducing protections. Senator Payne made that clear this week. A government that was not about reducing protections for working people would have done what she refused to do. She refused to rule out watering down unfair dismissal and refused to rule out watering down other bits in the act. You know she can't—

Government senators interjecting—