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

Thank you, Senator Van. I have certainly seen the media reports of BHP's claims as to the extra costs that they would incur under the government's legislation. But I make absolutely no apologies for us, a Labor government, seeking to close the types of loopholes that large multinational corporations, like BHP, like Qantas and like a number of others, have exploited and which have resulted in the pay and conditions of their workers being undermined.

One of the reasons I feel very confident in saying so is that I have met, personally, labour hire workers engaged at BHP mines in Central Queensland who have talked to me about the fact that they are paid significantly lower wages, with worse conditions, than the BHP permanent employees they work alongside.

What has actually happened here is this. BHP has taken it one step further by effectively setting up an in-house labour hire firm, where, again, the employees of that labour hire firm, the parent company of which is BHP, are paid lower rates and conditions than the full-time BHP workers that they work alongside. I've met these people. I've talked to them about the fact that they can't afford the same things for their families as the permanent employees they work alongside. I think it is wrong, and the Albanese government thinks that it's wrong, that a large company can enter an enterprise bargaining agreement with its workforce, negotiated with the union—which is what BHP and others have done—and then get around that enterprise agreement by forming an in-house labour hire company or by bringing in labour hire from outside paid on lower rates and conditions than that company has itself negotiated. That is wrong. That is un-Australian. And we want to crack down on it.