Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to rise in the second reading debate here in the Senate to address the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Bill 2023. This is a piece of work that completes very important work that was commenced with the secure jobs, better pay bill, which has been interrupted. And its's been the subject of considerable conversation in the community and some incredibly unhelpful hysteria from those who lost government and are still bleating and moaning that the world is being destroyed and that they cannot cope with life on the other side of this chamber. Their opposition is to everything, all the time. They are aptly called the 'no-alition'. They do not want this to proceed.

But there is good work being done here in the Senate, good work being done by an orderly government that respectfully engages with the people here who have been elected by the Australian people, that engages with the crossbench in a way that is respectful, determined to move as collaboratively and cleverly as we can towards cooperation in the interest of the nation. It's that endeavour of serving the nation that's going to see this bill advance, with the declarations today that it looks like there's support for this bill at this point in time—which hadn't been there.

Building consensus isn't an easy thing to do. That's why I want to take the opportunity to roundly endorse the profound leadership on these matters of the great Transport Workers Union, and the two men sitting here inside the Senate with me, directly in front of me: Senator Tony Sheldon—who's had a long and illustrious career with the TWU as its former leader and is now a great senator for the great state of New South Wales, alongside me here—and the wonderful Glenn Sterle from Western Australia. And I see representatives of the Transport Workers Union, and I'll wave to you, happily. I wave to you on the roads, like everybody does—wave to the trucks as we pass them. They are representing workers in the transport industry, representing owner-drivers in the transport industry, representing big businesses in the transport industry and representing every Australian who gets on the road every day with their precious cargo, the people they love, in the car, relying on your advocacy to bring to the attention of this Senate important matters of national safety and security.

And you've been doing it for years—years and years and years. There'll be a couple of steps forward, and then we get the opposition, when they were in government, and many steps backwards. But you've never resiled from the task. Your heart's been pure, and your efforts have been powerful and effective. So, I want to really congratulate you, because that's what union people do: never give up, always fight. And it's not a selfish fight for you as individuals; it's a battle in the interest of many. When this legislation passes there will be victory and benefit to so many millions of Australian workers, and your efforts over many years are a vital part of the recipe that is being cooked here today. So I want to sincerely thank you for those efforts.

Australians do believe that we live in a great country, and we believe in fairness. We also believe in the rule of law. People think that if it's in the law it's going to be pretty fair, and they're pretty shocked sometimes when they find that that isn't the case. I know Australian workers from growing up in a small-business family, in the construction sector, where across the road from us were a couple of drivers of trucks for the coalmining industry up in Appin. They used to park their trucks out the back of where we lived, and they were proud of their rigs. That's the kind of family that I grew up in, where everybody on our street wanted to pay off a house, raise their kids and do something meaningful, to be proud of what they did, to be able to go to work, to show up and get paid fairly for the work they do every day.

I don't think it's unreasonable, either, that Australian workers should work in a workplace where they have a degree of safety such that they can expect that they'll probably go home alive. That is not an unreasonable expectation. This piece of legislation today goes to all these things. It's about people showing up and getting paid fairly for what they do. It's about people showing up and being able to operate safely in the industry that they choose to be a part of.

And it's about people having, in those conditions, the necessary security of a job that will let them go to a bank and say, 'I've got enough security in my job to be able to pay back a loan' or 'I can actually buy a car', if they live in regional Australia, where there are no buses, no other transport, and if you've got no car you don't work. Even where I live, on the Central Coast, an hour and a half outside Sydney, a public transport system just doesn't operate. If you don't have a car, you don't work, you can't advance and you can't move into the future, which I believe you have a right to do as an Australian. You have to be able to pay off a car loan.

And the dream of owning an Australian home is something that people still very much hold onto in this country. There's a crisis in that sector as well that's going to require further legislation and policy work from this government to begin to redress the decades of neglect. But you're never going to get a home loan if you haven't got secure income. No bank is going to lend to you. And the insecurity of work that is the signature of those who are now sitting on the opposition benches is what they want to see continue to be the way of Australia. Well, no longer. I congratulate all the senators in this place who are coming onboard with a far better, healthier, more sustainable, more dignified, more just, more Australian way of enabling workers in this country to get the basic rights they deserve—to close the loopholes, to close the flawed, unethical exploitative practices of bad employers who seek profit over everything else and forget the humanity of the people who are the workforce.

I said I grew up in a small-business family. Sadly my dad, who was out on the construction sites laying out pipe, didn't live past his 49th birthday. But when my mum turned 70 and we had a party, let me tell you, half the people in that room were people who formerly worked in that business, because good businesses, especially good small businesses, absolutely understand that the strength of their business lies in the quality of their workforce. People who work in a small business are a work family, and you look after your people if you want to be successful in an ever-changing economy and you're in a small business. The small businesses that are already doing the things that this legislation is going to force the malign actors to come onboard with are actually going to have, for the first time in a decade, a level playing field—these great businesses that are already doing all the things that this piece of legislation is going to make law.

I want to congratulate Minister Burke, because there have been some serious headwinds—incredible opposition. We've heard some of the hysteria manifest in this chamber this evening. Senator David Pocock has already commented on it. There is, unbelievably, a desire amongst some people in this place, on that side of the chamber, to stand up and completely misrepresent reality. The shame of that is worn as a badge of honour, if they can prop up malign actors in big businesses and small that are abusing their workers. That's nothing to be proud of. The Australia I'm proud of is the one that unions have built and that unions are developing, through new legislation with this government and the crossbench, for Australia and our future. We can be better. If you're unfortunate enough as a worker to choose to work in a business that hasn't been doing the right thing, it's going to get a whole lot better when this piece of legislation is passed. If you're an immigrant to this country and come here with the belief that you're going to get a fair crack at life as a worker, this legislation is going to make it an awful lot more likely.

It wasn't so very long ago that the opposition leader at the time, Anthony Albanese, promised something extraordinary, it would seem from the media's response, which was just to recommend that the Fair Work Commission give Australians a minimum wage increase of $1. That set off chaos amongst the then government. Mr Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton and other members of the Liberal and National parties absolutely opposed that. The coalition threatened that the sky would fall in if the lowest-paid workers in Australia, some of whom are our essential workers, many of them represented by the great union with which I'm affiliated, the SDA—people who were on the front line looking after us during COVID—were granted that pay rise. And, like on so many things, the Liberal and National parties were wrong then, and they're wrong now in continuing to oppose this important piece of legislation.

Labor has always been there, supporting the national interest and looking after the workers of Australia. We're the party that brought in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme because people needed that. We're the party that brought in Medicare 40 years ago, against opposition, because the Australian people needed that. The Labor Party saw it. We understood it. We cared enough about it to create and bring into being Medicare. We brought in superannuation—a dignified retirement. The predecessors of this opposition said that the world would fall apart and that the whole economy would fall apart if superannuation were brought in.

There's a pattern here. They oppose anything that advantages ordinary, hardworking Australians. That is why they're going to continue to oppose this piece of legislation. They have no vision for the country. They have no sense of integrity in legislating for the advantage of all Australians. Theirs is an Australia where some have, and they feel even better when some don't. That is not the kind of Australia that the Labor Party seeks to bring into being in Australia. We've always been there for the Australian workers.

This legislation is going to certainly improve the lot of Australian workers, and it's going to improve the competitive advantage to good businesses that are doing the right thing already. This bill was not designed to hurt or impact good employees. We know that loopholes undermining pay and conditions for Australian workers cannot continue. Minister Burke has led the charge. He has been ably supported by decent Australians in business and in unions and by people who found out a little about what's going on here—people who've been subject to those loopholes.

My good friend Senator Polley this morning in her contribution said that she was brought up in a family that I think is quintessentially Australian. She was told, 'Show up to work, do a really good day's work, get a fair pay, make sure you've got an insurance policy and join your union, and if you get really smart you'll join the Labor Party too.' She knows what a winning ticket looks like. This piece of legislation will close the loopholes that have seen too many Australians exploited. This is going to be better for workers and better for our nation.