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

Heaven forbid, because we heard from delegates who are paramedics, aged-care workers, nurses, teachers, retail workers. Are you going to vote against fairness and rights for them to make sure their workplace is safer and more cohesive, with more of a chance to talk about how we can make the workplace so much better for everybody, including their own employer?

We have heard from Emma Foreman, who has worked as a midwife for six years and has been elected by her peers to be the representative for the last three years. Emma said: 'I might be one of the four midwives who are put on a 32-bed patient ward. They are impossible ratios. I pushed forward, and I moved that we deal with those ratio issues. It was about improving our women's care and our professional standards of care and about our patients' safety. As soon as I began to raise those issues, I was public enemy No. 1.'

It's not just protections. We heard through the inquiry that delegates improve communications between employers and employees, which can deliver productivity benefits for everyone. That's how it works—cooperatively, together. That's what the bill is about. They don't want it, because they know who's in charge. When we're talking about nurses and teachers and aged-care workers having a voice in their workplace, are those opposite seriously going to vote against that? Of course, those opposite have already voted for the rest of the bill—the better support for the first responders with PTSD, the better protections for workers subject to domestic violence, expanding the functions of the asbestos agency to include silica dust and closing the small business redundancy payments loophole. We'll see if those opposite are going to backflip on their support for those as well.

The fact is that, as you through this bill, item by item, every single provision is about making work safer or about making work fairer, and about decent employers having decent competition, not just supporting the racketeers at the top as that mob opposite is doing. We know the opposition leader, Mr Dutton, always stands for low wages and insecure work. We know that Mr Dutton stands with billionaires like his best mate, Gina Rinehart, over working people. But I also know there are senators opposite who say they feel very uncomfortable about this. We'll see if they do the right thing today, won't we?

I also want to touch very briefly on some of the reforms that have been delayed until next year. It's absolutely essential that, when we return in February, we pass the rest of the bill. The bill will make a life-changing difference to labour hire workers at Qantas, BHP and across the country. It will make a massive difference to the families of those killed at work. Workers who have had their wages stolen will now have a recourse to obtain justice. But we also need gig workers and others on our roads to be protected. The Liberals and Nationals go to this Christmas without the life-saving protections that those workers would get. I say this to those opposite: don't stand in the way of the industry, the workers, the owner-drivers and all those that say that that bill has to be put through. When it comes up next year, vote for it.