Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week, the Liberal National Party members, who supposedly represent regional Queensland, voted against the Albanese Labor government's closing the loopholes bill in the House of Representatives. This is a bill designed to stop the sorts of labour hire rorts that we have seen and have become all too familiar with in the mining industry in regional Queensland. That's why the bill is called closing the loopholes, because it's time to stop these rorts. After all the years of these local MPs claiming that they support jobs in regional Queensland, when they were given the chance in the House of Reps last week, they voted with Peter Dutton instead of for their community. They voted for loopholes, not against them.

When the Senate committee inquiry into the closing the loopholes legislation came to Central Queensland, Noah Chapman from Rockhampton said this:

… when I first started out at the mine where I'm at, all the tradesmen were on $68 an hour. I started out there on $13 an hour, which was 40 per cent of the award at the time, not 40 per cent of the tradesman's wage.

The Federal Secretary of the AMIEU, Matt Journeaux, said:

You now have a situation where two workers are working side by side doing the identical job, with one employed directly and one employed by labour hire. The labour hire worker will receive substantially less for doing the same work.

This isn't a new problem. Actually, in 2019, the member for Capricornia, Michelle Landry, said that she would wholeheartedly support the introduction of laws to prevent the amount of insecure work in the mining industry. But then she voted against them. Workers have been calling for years for laws to prevent big companies making agreements with workers for fair wages and conditions and then using labour hire to undercut those wages. The Albanese Labor government is determined to protect workers and lift wages.