Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

To avoid any doubt, this is what is going on here in the Senate: Senator Waters has asked a completely legitimate question of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Birmingham. That question is: what secret, dirty deal has been done between the government and Pauline Hanson's One Nation party to sell out workers? What secret dirty deal has been done between the government and One Nation to ensure that companies actually can fire a worker and then turn around and hire other workers to take advantage of the hiring credit?

I referred in my earlier contribution in this debate to workers in Tasmania and the need to protect them. Here is a bit of news for Senator Hanson and Senator Roberts: those arguments apply equally to workers in Queensland. When Senator Waters asked this entirely reasonable question of Senator Birmingham, what did we get from the government? Absolute crickets. That's what we got. The big bagel. We got absolutely zilch out of this minister. This is his first week in the gig and he's squibbing it already. He won't even answer questions. Interestingly, he couldn't even mount an argument when he moved the motion as to why the Senate should not insist on the amendments passed yesterday. So we've had no argument from the government, no restating of a position and no stating of any new position. Again, all we've had is crickets. When Senator Waters got up and asked that incredibly reasonable and sensible question about what backroom deals had been done, all we got was crickets once again.

Let's be really clear about what is going on here—a deal stitched up between Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the Liberal and National Party government in this country to do over workers and to look after the interests of the big corporates. That's what's going on here. Once again the interests of those big corporates take precedence over the interests of ordinary Australians. It's no surprise that that is what the Liberal Party would do. They are the agents in this parliament of the corporatocracy. But One Nation pretend that they are the party of the battlers. Yet they turn around and vote with the government to do over workers right around this country.

Senator Birmingham, in your first week on the job, you have a chance to show you take this chamber seriously and you take the role of Leader of the Government in the Senate seriously. Will you please answer the question: what deal has been done with One Nation? What did you offer them in order to induce them over to your side of the chamber when in fact they were saying in here yesterday they wanted this bill defeated utterly?

Senator Birmingham interjecting—

I think I heard Senator Birmingham respond to me and say, 'None.' If that's your answer, could you please get up and put it into the Hansard because waving your hands around, mate, is not helping anybody.