Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 is not just about helping workers but about helping good employers, the people we on this side actually represent, who are being crushed. These people are being crushed by thieves, fraudsters, the corporate racketeers and the industrial murderers—the big businesses who don't play by the rules and drove a race to the bottom on wages, conditions and safety. This bill is about standing up to those bottom feeders, like Qantas and BHP, and saying on behalf of workers and good employers alike, 'Enough is enough.'

We're about to find out whether all the grandstanding from those opposite about Qantas in recent months was worth anything. In my three decades representing Qantas workers, I never once saw those opposite lift a single finger to help those workers. Even as workers were being smashed by the labour hire loophole created by Alan Joyce himself, they did nothing. Even as Alan Joyce split the workforce across 38 different companies, they did nothing. There are Qantas planes right now in the air where there are four flight attendants employed by four different companies on four different rates of pay, all set up by Qantas. The cabin supervisor may be earning less than the people they're supervising because of this rort they want to protect. Those opposite knew about it. We've been telling them for years, and they never did a single thing about it. Even as Qantas workers were being illegally sacked in their thousands to be replaced by cheap, disposable labour hire, they did nothing.

When I pointed this out at a Canberra hearing on the closing loopholes bill last month, Senator McKenzie said something that actually shocked me. She said:

… I ask you to withdraw those accusations because I am not on a unity ticket with Qantas and Alan Joyce when it comes to ripping off Qantas workers through labour hire. I am not. I never have been.

So there you have it. We're about to find out whether Senator McKenzie will be true to those words that she uttered that day. Senator McKenzie has an opportunity right now today to make her position on Qantas ripping off workers through their labour hire very clear, as does everyone in this chamber. Either you are voting for closing the loophole or you're voting for keeping it open. It's that simple. What's it going to be? Are you on the side of thousands of Qantas workers who've had their livelihoods destroyed, or are you on the side of Alan Joyce and Richard Goyder? We'll see whether Senator McKenzie has any credibility when it comes to Qantas or whether she's more worried about her cozy seat in the Chairman's Lounge than closing Alan Joyce's loopholes. It's actually very simple.

The other parts of the bill that the Liberals and Nationals hate aren't even in here. They're being delayed until next year, like helping casuals get secure jobs—they hate that. Helping truck drivers earn enough money so that they don't work themselves to death—they hate that. Ensuring gig workers aren't getting butchered on our roads for $6 an hour—they hate that. Making it easier for unions to investigate wage theft—they hate that. All those things that we desperately want to get done and the Liberals and Nationals hate are successfully delayed until next year. So the part we're voting on today is the part that closes Alan Joyce's labour hire loopholes. So good news! Everyone gets to have their verdict on Alan Joyce's legacy put on the record for all eternity here today. I look forward to Senator McKenzie joining me over on this side of the chamber and voting with us, as she said she would.

For those who aren't familiar with how Qantas has seriously hurt thousands of people through this loophole, let me tell you through the words of their victims. Sarah de Wilt is a flight attendant employed by one of the internal labour hire firms, subsidies, created by Alan Joyce. Qantas has not directly employed a flight attendant since 2008. Instead, they are employed through a web of 17 subsidiaries. Some earn less than half of what directly employed flight attendants earn for the exact same work. Ms de Wilt didn't even learn that she wasn't a Qantas employee until five months on the job. She told the inquiry:

It's quite disheartening, quite confusing, a little bit demoralising, knowing that you're there on the cart doing the same thing. When the fire alarm went off in the bathroom, you were there bringing the emergency equipment and so were they. You are cleaning up the vomit on the floor alongside somebody else. You were doing 19-hour duty and keeping your eyes open and keeping each other awake the same as everyone else, wearing the exact same uniform … I was a little bit blindsided … on my payslip there's a kangaroo and it says 'Qantas' … You can imagine what it would do for unity and morale in the workplace.

You just can't imagine the result. And it isn't just the flight attendants; it's the ground handlers, including the 1,700 that the High Court ruled were illegally sacked. So how can the Liberals and Nationals defend this? What side are you on? Alan Joyce's side or that of Qantas workers and hardworking Australians?

Since Alan Joyce has created this loophole, it has been picked up by others, like BHP. If there is one company in Australia that can afford to pay its people fairly, you would think it's BHP, wouldn't you? It's the biggest, richest company in Australia. Just like Qantas, BHP thinks it's above the law. Just like Qantas, BHP has set up internal labour hire companies that it uses to avoid paying fairly negotiated rates in its workplace agreements. The workers of the company that BHP set up, BHP Operations Services, earn 40 per cent less for doing the exact same work at the exact same mine sites. We took the inquiry to Rockhampton, and we heard directly from BHP and BHP Operations Services workers. Brodie Allen, a mine worker at BHP Blackwater coal mine told us:

I've been coalmining and in the industry for seven years. I've been labour hire the entire time, so I go in and do the same job as everybody else, but I'm paid $40,000 less a year to do the exact same thing.

Brodie has been ripped off $40,000 a year for seven years. BHP is the richest company in Australia. They don't need to rob their workers of their pay. But they keep running a protection racket for those racketeers on the opposite side. They do it because they can and because the Liberals and Nationals let them get away with it.

I know Senator Roberts has been talking about this issue for a long time, and I will give him a great deal of credit for that. But now we get to put our cards on the table. Now we see who really is going to vote for 'same job, same pay' in the mining industry. Senator Canavan is another advocate for the coal industry. I'm very interested in his vote on this as well. This is 'put up or shut up' time when it comes to standing up for mine workers, especially coalmine workers in Central Queensland and the Hunter. Surely, Senator Roberts and Senator Canavan can't stomach hardworking people in their communities being treated like this. Isaac council mayor, Anne Baker, couldn't have said it better. She has 28 coal mines in her region, and she said in the inquiry:

We are actually living a casualisation pandemic …

…   …   …

labour hire, or a form of casualisation, … should never have been allowed … to be a model of full replacement. We are actually living and breathing this, to the detriment of the viability and the resilience of our community.

To the Nationals opposite, who are supposed to be representatives of regional Australia: here is a regional council with regional workers crying out for this bill. The ball is in your court. Every other employer in the country must be looking at how BHP and Qantas have used this loophole and be asking, 'Why are we playing by the rules?' when the richest employer in the country isn't and the protection racquet of those opposite, in the Liberals and National Party, has been exposed. It's just the big corporate guerillas that are doing this. That's why BHP, through the Minerals Council, have funded the whole campaign against the bill. It's not about small business; it's about the richest and most powerful people in our society doing over working families. So voting against this bill is actually a vote to let the big corporate guerillas and the billionaires play by different rules than the rest of us.

I also want to touch on the other important things that this bill does, which, again, are completely uncontroversial, unlike your one on the ideological extremist at the Minerals Council. It makes an employer intentionally stealing wages from their employee a criminal offence. Just this morning we've seen the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association launch another class action against McDonald's over wage theft. It is endemic. Are the Liberals and Nationals going to vote against that too? We'll soon be finding out, won't we? Because this bill also introduces a new criminal offence of industrial manslaughter, and I want to commend the families of those killed at work who have campaigned tirelessly for this reform. I want to commend Kay Catanzariti, Pam Gurner-Hall and Linda Ralls and many others who have fought so hard for this. Are the Liberals and Nationals going to vote against them as well? Really?

Those opposite say they're tough on crime, but are they going to be tough on intentional industrial manslaughter? This bill makes it easier for democratically elected workplace delegates to do their jobs and to ensure they have the training they need to actually do their jobs properly. Are you going to vote against that too? Make it work better, where people can work together, be tripartite and actually work out how to make a better workplace—are you going to vote against that?