Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can I just begin my contribution by thanking those on the frontline: our medical people, our paramedics, those working in workplaces that are staying open to ensure that we get the supplies we need, and those delivering services at this time. There are many people out there working without the necessary personal protective equipment to keep them safe while they're doing their job to try and keep us safe. I want to say thank you to all of those people and recognise the contribution that they're making. Senator Kitching and Senator Chisholm, in their contributions, both talked about the way in which Labor has worked constructively with the government to put forward, certainly from our point of view, improvements to the legislation to ensure that not as many people fall through the cracks—or that no-one, hopefully, would fall through the cracks. But there still are many thousands of Australians who will miss out. I think it was earlier today, or it may have been yesterday, that I heard the Prime Minister talk about cooperatively working with businesses and unions. For us on this side, that's not a new process at all. It's something that we've done for years. Unions are representatives of those workers who are out there on the frontline. They're representatives of the workers who are dealing with the difficulty of a very worried public at the moment, and they should be consulted. So for us it's not a new concept, and I hope that in the future discussions around all sorts of different things occur continually with business but are also inclusive of the union movement through the ACTU.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the responses that we got from the government today, particularly about those thousands of people who aren't eligible. I think it's over a million. There are casuals and labour hire, and there is the nature of industries. We understand that this legislation needs to get through, and I think Senator Wong, in her contribution to the ministerial statement that Senator Cormann put forward earlier, talked about the fact that we will not hold this up. But there are amendments that will help people. I heard Mr Porter the other day talk about this being our 'Dunkirk moment', that it was 'get the lifeboats out'. I guess one of the areas of concern that I have is that there are many Australians who are not going to get access to those lifeboats. That's why I urge the government to consider the amendments put forward by Labor. We need as many people in those lifeboats as possible.

Minister Cash talked about those being included, and that the government had to draw a line somewhere. I've been getting, as I'm sure everyone on this side has, and probably all of us have, lots of emails. We've seen the images of Centrelink; we've seen all that. We really need to think about the difficulties that some of those workers are going to face into the future. And not just the workers but the employers as well, when they lose employees who they may not get back—employees who they have trained and who understand their industry. There are a lot of workers in the labour hire sector. I know from my background with the AWU that there are a lot of concerns around some areas and some workplaces. Shipbuilding in Tasmania is a good example that I can give you, where there are some employees who have worked in a workplace for over 10 years, some for 13 years. They have worked at the same workplace for that period of time. They've been moved on to labour hire, then the employer employs them back, and they then go back to labour hire. They have been in and out of that same work site at the same address. The only thing that's changed is their employer—the name of the person who employs them—not their workplace, not their work address and not their pay rate or their classification. They come in one day employed by X employer, the next day they're employed by Y employer. Yet, they're not eligible. That doesn't seem to make sense to me, and there's no logic in this. I urge the government to look at these areas. Senator Ruston in particular has the ability to look at these areas. I urge her to do that, for those long-term employees who would be considered casual employees in excess of 12 months work, bar the fact that their employer has decided to change the method of employment, the name of the employer or the process of how they're actually employed.

Question agreed to.