Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022, which I consider to be the wrong bill being introduced at the wrong time. It's a time of very high inflation in this country. We're looking at eight per cent inflation by the end of the year. Electricity prices, as announced in the last budget, are going up by approximately 56 per cent over the course of the next two years, and gas prices are going up by approximately 40 to 44 per cent over the next 12 months.

In that high-cost, high-inflationary environment, where the economic outlook for the world, amongst our trading partners and in our own country is very dangerous, the government is choosing to introduce this bill. I'm gravely concerned about the impact this bill will have in terms of the Australian economy and in terms of people actually having jobs. That is my grave concern as I consider this bill.

I was left to reflect last night, as I listened to my good friend Senator Susan McDonald give her presentation in relation to this bill, that we heard from someone who's actually owned and operated a business. Senator McDonald owned a chain of butcher stores called Super Butcher in my home state of Queensland, and she had to turn that business around from a situation where it wasn't doing too well. It had some internal issues.

She turned that business around successfully and carried the weight of turning that business around. That weight included the weight of managing the cashflow, of paying all the expenses; the weight of knowing that the employees who are employed by that business are relying on the business owner to provide their future employment; the weight of dealing with customers; and the weight of dealing with supply chain issues, regulatory issues and all the other issues which employers in this country face.

I reflect on my own background in the mining industry. I worked for a mid-tier copper and gold mining company that successfully built two mines in one of the poorest countries in the world, Laos. We lifted thousands of people out of poverty, and we did it to the highest environmental and safety standards and with a very deep and committed social licence program, which included microfinance programs to lift the local village people out of poverty and provided opportunities for them to introduce microindustries.

At the height of the global financial crisis, it nearly all came crashing down. The price of copper went from approximately $4.30 a pound to $1.30 a pound in the course of two weeks. The share price of that company went from about $1.12 a share to 8½c. I remember having a discussion with a dear friend, who was a fellow senior executive in that company. He was going on a family holiday, and he said, 'Paul, if the receivers and managers are appointed, if the administrators come into the business, try and get that painting out of my office.' It was his own personal property and meant a great deal to him from a family perspective. That's how bad the situation was. We got through that with a lot of support from shareholders, from suppliers we had to negotiate with, but it was difficult; it was extraordinarily difficult. We were on the precipice—absolutely no question about that. That experience left a deep mark on me.

I can then remember coming out the other side, when we got hit with a wave of regulation from the previous Labor government, when Wayne Swan was Treasurer of this country. We sat around a board table—