Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

What a performance by Senator Cash this morning! I had to reset in here because I wasn't sure if I was in the Australian Senate or on Home and Away, let's be honest. What a joke this has been!

Today the Australian people can see what Independent crossbenchers can actually get done for the better. The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 is a big one and it will impact on many Australians and Australian businesses. That's why Senator Pocock and I wanted to split out some of the elements, so we could have time to go through the rest very carefully over the limited time we have over the Christmas period. I would like to thank the minister and his office for coming to the table and working constructively so we could get more protections in place for Aussie workers as soon as possible. I'd also like to thank the minister for agreeing to initiate an independent inquiry into Comcare, which is about 20 years overdue. It has a lot of the same problems as the Department of Veterans' Affairs, and they are problems that need to be fixed. I'm also grateful that the government has agreed to give extra resources to the Fair Work Ombudsman to help small businesses understand their obligations under this legislation. I also thank Senator Pocock and his amazing team, as per usual, for working with my team to get the job done. I know the blue team may not be very happy today about some elements—but I also want to thank you for getting us to this point and for your stance with us over the initial four elements that we wanted to get through for those people affected by PTSD, domestic violence and silicosis and, of course, the redundancy on small businesses and making sure that people get paid. I really do, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for that; otherwise, we wouldn't have got this stuff through before Christmas.

I think if you ask most Australians if they thought every elected MP in Canberra could work together and get the best outcome for the Australian people, they would say, 'Yeah, why don't we see more of it?' Well, today we've seen it. Workers will get these protections from the beginning of next year. That means that federal first responders won't have to prove they have PTSD—and, I tell you, thank God for that—before they can get help. Can you imagine what it's like being in trauma and having to prove that? I would like to acknowledge Tasmania's Simone Haigh. Simone lost a very dear mate, a first responder who took his life because he didn't get the help he needed—and he is just one of many. Simone has pushed very hard for an inquiry, and Senator Anne Urquhart has backed her all the way. Your inquiry that finished in 2019 has made a significant difference. Also, this includes Border Force. I am working with the minister and hoping that Defence will follow suit as soon as possible so that veterans also don't have to prove they have PTSD before they can get the help that they need.

I want you guys to know that we are onto this. Unfortunately, this goes over a few acts, and it has not been simple to get this done this year. But I have been promised we will get onto this in the first quarter of next year and make sure this is fixed. I know the detriment it has on you and your families along with the other injuries that you carry alongside your PTSD. I have seen what it does to you and your families, and I want it stopped.

The passing of the first part of the closing loopholes bill also means that people who are suffering from family and domestic violence can't be sacked or discriminated against because of that abuse. It brings silica in line with asbestos so we can have national rules for silica and we can start gathering national data. The majority of Australians suffering from silicosis are in their mid-30s. They're our sons. They're our daughters. We need to do all we can to eradicate exposure to this horrible goddamn disease. Passing the closing loopholes bill—let's call it 'part 1'—also means that workers who have worked for larger businesses that are facing insolvency get the redundancy payments they deserve. It also closes the loopholes in labour hire exploited by companies like Qantas, who have not helped their own situation. We give you a little bit, and you take the whole kit and caboodle. Seriously, with the amount of profits that you people make—big mining, big gas—you do not pay your people properly? You have brought this on yourselves. You have brought this on yourselves, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. So you're going to lose a little bit more of your profit. I tell you what—it wouldn't even be a sneeze in a hanky. You won't even notice it. Sometimes labour hire works. But you big corporations are abusing it, like I said, and you're cutting corners to beef up your profits. Quite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Merry Christmas to you!

Senator Pocock and I also agreed that we needed to address wage theft and the nonpayment of superannuation. But we insisted on safeguards to protect and help small businesses so they would have time to understand the new rules. Small businesses are doing it tough, and many of them are still dealing with the impact of COVID-19. All of the small businesses and large businesses that I know in Tasmania want to do the right thing by their workers. Part 1 of the closing loopholes bill also makes industrial manslaughter a criminal offence. It is way overdue. Andrea Madeley, an Adelaide mum, has campaigned hard for laws on industrial manslaughter for nearly 20 years. Her son Daniel was just 18 and operating a horizontal borer in South Australia when his dust coat got caught in the spindle and he was pulled into the machine. He suffered horrific injuries and passed the next day. The campaign got industrial manslaughter criminalised in South Australia and, I am sure, helped to pressure the federal government to act. It is a shame that, in this place, it has taken to so long, and we've lost so many others.

In the last 10 years, 87 Tasmanians have lost their lives at work, and there has not been one criminal conviction—not one. The minister has also agreed to amend the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 to address the ongoing issues of how independent medical assessments are used and are actually killing people, because that is the truth. They are pushing people to the brink. There is nothing worse than when you have your own psychiatrist or your own specialist that reports that they've seen you for 10 years but when you go and see some specialist for 15 minutes they say there is nothing wrong with you. Where is the fairness in that? They spend no time with you, and the department only gives them the documents that they want to give to make the department look good and miss everything else.

This is what happens in DVA and Comcare, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Many of these independent assessors are also contracted by the Commonwealth. That means they're paid a nice little penny. Guess what they do to keep their job? That's exactly how they act. If that hasn't been a conflict of interest for years and years, I don't know what is. You're paying them to go against us in a 15-minute consultation and paying them 3½ or four grand for a report where they did not have the full information in the first place. How can they possibly make a determination in that amount of time?

Part 2 of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 will be up next year. This includes looking at minimum standards for digital platform workers and the gig economy, as it is called. It's a good name—the gig economy—and I'm sure that to all those people out there, especially you young guns, it sounds really cool. But we need to make sure these gig companies are being fair to the Aussies who are working for them. This is quite complicated. I want to be very, very clear about that.

We will also be looking at the road transport reforms. I like many parts of these reforms. I come from a trucking family. My dad drove trucks for 45 years. The big supermarkets pressure truckies into contracts that don't work for owner-drivers. As I've said, some of that is good, but my concern is that the small owner-drivers are treated like the big supermarkets.

It will also look at casual workers who want to become permanent. This also needs to be looked at very carefully. There are some negative impacts in that bill. Some retailers are already doing the right thing. I say this nicely, but I imagine that's because the unemployment rate is down to about 3½ per cent, so you're doing everything you can to see your employees. It will be very interesting to see, once that goes up, whether that will stay in place. I have my doubts. I will give it to Target, though, at this point in time. I've heard some employees from Target in Tassie are already being offered work in a permanent role after just six months of filling a casual position.

I have to say: it is better to treat your people properly, give them full-time jobs and do that sort of stuff, because it brings morale. And morale—here's some common sense for this side—brings productivity. That's how it works. They work hand in hand.

We also need to be careful about the impact on the smaller businesses. We're already aware that they are exempt, and we want to make sure that that stays in place and there aren't unintended consequences for small businesses from this, even though they are exempt. I will work in good faith with the government—as we always do, regardless of who's in government—and the minister on part 2 of the closing loopholes bill. But I can assure you that it is a long way from being a free pass.

I have an open-door policy. I always have. I will talk to everyone and treat everyone the same, whether you're a minister, a senator, a stakeholder or an everyday Australian. That's why the Jacqui Lambie Network doesn't take money from big corporate donors or unions. We do not want to be fogged when we are making our decisions. We want to do the best thing by the nation moving forward.

When Senator Tyrrell and I consider legislation, we look at it from all angles and ask, 'What's best?' That's it. It's as simple as that. It's not that we're worried about losing our seats because we don't have the money to buy them. I want to make sure that is quite clear. We earn them. That is our biggest pride in the Jacqui Lambie Network. We have to earn them. We cannot buy them, nor can we be bought. I will never allow anyone who comes in here, if there are more in the future, to be put in that situation where they are bought. It's not on.

There will be commentators today that will accuse Senator Pocock and I of doing a deal early. To be honest with you, I don't care. Some will say we should have just passed the whole bill. Well, unfortunately, we can't. What we are doing is working as fast as we can with the limited resources we have and relying very heavily on people that we can't afford to pay who are sitting in the middle of all of this. They don't work for unions or big business. We have to rely on their time, free of cost. That's where we're at.

What we set out to do from the beginning was to look at this bill with cool heads and to look at what was uncontroversial and we could get passed and what parts of the bill needed more time to consider the impacts. That is what has happened here today. We will work constructively, once again, with the government and the minister and do everything that we can to try to work out the second half of the bill. Once again, I want to make clear we believe this is the right thing to do. I'm sick and tired of hearing of miners who are doing the same job getting paid $30,000 less than their mates or of having their mates coming to me and saying, 'It's so unfair that I get an extra 30,000 bucks because I'm not working for a labour hire company.' This labour hire crap, I will tell you now, is way off the radar. There is no other way to put it. It is absolutely being taken advantage of by the big boys in town and it is going to stop. What saddens me more than anything is the profits that they make they scrounge off their own workers. They seriously lack a conscience, and that is a problem. It's all about profits instead of people.

So now we are going to fix that. It won't even take a bite out of their profits. We would never have had to do this if they had just done the right thing in the first place, and that is the truth of the matter. Profits over people is going to stop. It is uncalled for and it is unneeded. It does not help productivity in a workplace. I don't care what they say. It does not. Happy workers, happy profits—that's how it works.