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

I look at this MPI and I see that 'destructive industrial relations changes' is one of the elements, and the loss of industrial jobs—it goes on to some other matters that Senator Canavan raised before. So I might just go to some of the points about these 'destructive industrial relations changes' because it always intrigues me. We've got one size fits all. Everywhere there's a change and a market regulation to give people more rights, to decrease fuel prices and to make the market more stable, whether it be in fuel and gas or in industrial relations, it's something that those opposite always seem to oppose.

I'm going to have a great deal of delight hearing some of the comments from the other senators as well, when we start looking at some of the views from people. I'll concentrate for a moment on Queensland. At a Rockhampton hearing on 31 October 2023, on closing loopholes, Mitch Hughes, the MEU acting district president, a miner of many years experience, said:

When I started in the industry at Saraji, the majority of workers were employed directly through BMA. Now I estimate that at least at Saraji, that number is somewhere around 40 per cent of those directly employed at the worksite. Those workers not directly employed are also on terms and conditions of employment that are significantly less than those who are directly employed.

I'm going to raise other views as well. Dwayne Arnold, a coalminer and labour hire worker who works at Anglo American's Grosvenor mine, said:

There's a big difference in pay rates between the permanent employees and labour hire workers like me. We get about $20 to $30 an hour less, even though we do the same work and labour hire workers are equally skilled and experienced.

I will go to a couple of other pieces of evidence that were given during that inquiry up there in Rockhampton. The people in the local community know what the effect of regulation is. It means that you can actually turn around and start getting paid fair compensation for the work that's performed. We know that those opposite, the Liberals and the Nationals, are always for low pay. That's in their DNA. They've got to be for low pay, otherwise it's not worth saying or not worth voting against. They want to make sure that people get paid as little as possible, particularly in an industry that's receiving such large profits.

The Mining and Energy Union say they've appropriately taken the first steps on 'same job same pay' laws in a bid to rectify claimed pay gaps of $20,000 a year for labour hire workers at a Queensland coalmine. They go on to talk about substantial wage differentials in the Callide case and the need for workers who are doing the exact same work to get paid the exact same rates.

You need to start looking at locals and what they say—local community activists and people who are elected by the community to represent the interests of the community. At the inquiry in October 2023 that I was talking about before, Anne Baker, the mayor of Isaac Regional Council, said:

I'm the mayor of Queensland's largest resource region. We are a host to 28 active coalmines. We've lived with the consequences of labour hire practices in particular for well over a decade. … Unfortunately, what we live in—our lived experience and what we see in our region—is that labour hire practices are driving down our liveability for our community and our broader region. This is just not a debate for the workers themselves, the industry and the unions. There is a direct impact to our community's sustainability when these decisions are taken around casualisation and labour hire.

When you start looking at all that, you then have to start looking at what's actually happened. Those opposite have been launching campaigns to talk about the big impact on the mining industry, but what they fail to do is talk about the fact that we have had a labour surge.

In the mining industry, a number of mines were sold by BHP. Brodie Allen, a coalmine worker at Blackwater mine, said that they've been able to turn around now and get paid the exact same rate that the direct hire workers get because they've been sold to another company which is smaller than BHP. They've got the increase, and BHP wouldn't have paid it. This is about highway robbery by these big miners, and those opposite are standing with them.