Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to make a short contribution on this debate. I've already outlined in the procedural motion the reasons why the government did not support the procedural motion to extend debate on this matter and, effectively, to gazump the Senate inquiry that's still underway on this very legislation. But what I want to focus on in these brief remarks are the reasons why the government does not support splitting the bills in the way that's being proposed.

I support much of what Senator Pocock just said, and Senator Lambie before him, as to why the matters contained in the bills they're now moving are important. That shouldn't be a surprise, because they have come from government legislation. These are things that no government, including the former coalition government, ever thought were important enough to bring legislation to this chamber about—things like protecting workers from silicosis, which is an absolute scourge in the construction sector. And there are things like better protecting first responders, including the issues surrounding post-traumatic stress disorder. They are very important issues for us to legislate on, to protect those workers and to give them greater protection than they have at the moment.

That's why we have introduced legislation to deal with these matters. But these are not the only matters that are important when it comes to worker protection contained in the broader bills which the government has introduced and which are currently before the Senate inquiry. While it's important to deal with silicosis, it's important to deal with first-responder health concerns and it's important to deal with all of the other matters that are included in these bills now being moved by senators Lambie and Pocock, I think, and the government thinks, that it's also important to stop workers from being deliberately underpaid; it's important that employers who deliberately steal wages from their employees face criminal consequences. That is in the broader piece of legislation that the government has introduced, but is not included in the bills now put before us by senators Lambie and Pocock.

It's also important that we protect workers from what's known as 'industrial manslaughter', where workers die because of the deliberate recklessness or negligence of their employers. It's pretty important to protect workers from being killed because of their own employer's negligence. But that hasn't been picked up in the bills that senators Lambie and Pocock are introducing here; it's contained in the broader legislation that the government has put forward. It hasn't been deemed important; I would have thought that protecting workers from being killed at work because of the negligence of their employers is pretty important, just as dealing with the other important matters that are included in these bills before us today are.

I would have thought that protecting casual workers from the safety concerns that arise from the casual nature of their employment—gig workers, delivery drivers, truckies, coalminers and all of those people who, at the moment, are wrongly classified, and paid and treated as casual workers without any protection. I would have thought that their rights to be safe at work and to make complaints about safety concerns without fearing retribution from their employer are important. I would have thought those were pretty important as well, but they haven't been included in Senator Lambie and Senator Pocock's bills. For whatever reason, they don't seem to consider those matters as important as the ones that are being dealt with here.

Similarly, I would have thought that it's pretty important to even the playing field for the hundreds of thousands of workers in this country who are employed as labour hire—those who are brought into a workplace and paid at lower rates and conditions than the permanent workers they work alongside—and to make sure that just because they're called 'labour hire' doesn't mean they can be ripped off by employers who have entered into an enterprise agreement with the rest of their workforce. I reckon that's pretty important, but that isn't being dealt with in this legislation that's before us today either.

We do not understand why Senators Lambie and David Pocock, with the support of the opposition, are cherrypicking aspects of the government's broader legislation and saying: 'These things are important but those other things—you know what?—they're not that important. They can wait till next year.' Let's not forget that the government's original proposal was to have this legislation in its entirety dealt with this year. Senator Lambie, Senator Pocock and the opposition say the matters that are before us today are important—and they are. They're things like protecting workers from silicosis and protecting first responders and assisting them with PTSD. Those things are important, and they could have been dealt with under the government's original proposal. All those matters and all the other ones I've gone through, which have been kicked off into next year, could have been dealt with this year.

We agree with Senators Lambie and Pocock that the things that are before us today are important. That is why this government, a Labor government, introduced legislation to deal with them. We've now got these crocodile tears from the opposition, who are saying: 'It's really important that we protect workers from silicosis. It's really important that we protect first responders.' They had 10 years to do something about those things, and on not one day of those 10 years did they think they were important, so give me a break with the crocodile tears. It's a Labor government that is trying to fix the very matters that are before us today—protecting workers from silicosis and death from it, looking after first responders, and all of the other things that are included in these bills today—but what we're also trying to do is to protect workers from being killed at work because of their employer's recklessness and negligence, something that apparently isn't a priority for anyone else in the chamber. That can wait till next year, apparently.

Dozens of workers in Australia are killed every year at work because of the negligence of their employers. I don't know about other senators, but every year, when I'm not here, I go to the International Workers Memorial Day gathering and meet the families of workers who have died at work, very often because of the negligence and recklessness of their employers. I think those employers should be held to account. But we're not going to get around to that till next year because the people who have introduced these bills say it's not a priority.

We should be valuing a worker's life and their entitlement to be protected from their employer's negligence just as much as we should be valuing those workers who are exposed to silicosis poisoning and those first responders who need better care from our community. We should be stopping employers deliberately stealing the wages of their employees. It's not about accidental underpayments; it's about employers who know they are stealing wages from their employees. We should be fixing that this year, not saying: 'It's not a priority. We'll leave that till next year.' That is what the effect of the bills before us today would be. They are cherrypicking some things as being important but, in leaving out deliberate wage theft and the reckless killing of workers and in leaving open loopholes for labour hire workers to be exploited, we are saying that workers' rights don't matter. The government doesn't agree with that. That's exactly why we think the entire package of government legislation should be dealt with this year, rather than the Senate cherrypicking a few bits and saying of the rest of it, 'We'll get around to that one day.'

You know what, Madam Acting Deputy President? Workers were waiting for 10 years under a coalition government for those matters to be dealt with, and they never had them dealt with. They finally elected a government who are serious about getting wages moving again and about getting workers decent protection in the workplace, and they have an entitlement to have those rights respected. What we're doing today, with some senators cherrypicking parts of that legislation, is saying that those rights don't matter. I'd ask the senators who've introduced this legislation to think carefully about that.