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

On this night when Cyclone Debbie is wreaking havoc on our fellow Australians in Queensland, I would also like to acknowledge that I understand you will always be Queenslanders first but as a southerner, south of the border, I say that we are praying for your safety and the safety of your families and community and we sincerely hope and trust that there are no lives lost and people are able to recover as quickly as possible after this great storm has passed.

I rise this evening to welcome a very important agreement that was reached last Friday on the Central Coast between the Central Coast Council, local garbage workers and their union. This is a deal that will end a deadlock that has gone on for far too long, and it will indeed protect workers' rights and end the dispute. I feel a bit like Senator Duniam: it is quite nice to actually have a good story to tell about industrial relations instead of the shameful stories that we have been hearing throughout the parliament all week.

It is enormously disappointing that our hardworking local waste workers had to fight for 18 months against a Liberal-controlled council in the first place and then a Liberal-imposed amalgamation and administration just to get the same pay for the same work. These workers have been negotiating for a new enterprise agreement since February 2015. My office has been advocating on their behalf for nearly 18 months as well, to try and draw attention to the injustice of the deal that was being offered. And this goes to the nature of insecure work, which is everywhere in our community.

At the end of each contract for doing the waste works in our areas, a tendering process begins, and it involves companies tendering at the lowest hourly rate frequently being the ones who win the contract. Accordingly, the hourly rate of the employee drops to suit the incoming tenderer. Furthermore, with each new contract, workers had to reapply for their positions and forfeited any accrued entitlements. It is shameful to think that is going on. With the councils' finances funded by people in the local community, we want our local workers to be paid fairly for the work that they do. We want our local workers to be in secure employment in our community, and certainly this was not the situation.

Finally, a deal has been negotiated by the Transport Workers Union, and it was achieved with the Central Coast Council and their officers to end this completely untenable situation. Happily, it includes a clause that requires the council to include in its tender negotiations for the contract: continuing employment for the employees of the current contractor, assurance that all existing employees receive statutory leave entitlements that are recognised by those that tender, an agreed minimum rate of pay for those employees, and an immediate end of industrial action.

I was proud to stand with the waste workers as they stood up for their rights and did strike. It is a terrible inconvenience for the community, but the community have been supporting them. They have been out at Woy Woy and Gosford train stations, all the way up to Wyong, helping the community understand that, in moving around in the community with such heavy machinery, there are safety issues. We cannot afford a casualised workforce where people who do not know how to manage that heavy equipment are forced into the community on insecure wages.

I am very pleased that this agreement removes the potential threat of workers being sacked by a new contractor and means that their rights that have been ignored in the past will now be honoured. Our great local garbos, as we affectionately call them, and their families now have job security. This agreement keeps food on the table and mortgages being paid for hundreds of local families, and it safeguards local jobs from severe cuts to pay and conditions. Critically, it now offers significant protections that workers did not have before.

The impact on our regional economy is very significant. We have seen the short-sightedness of this government opposing penalty rates and not standing up for Australian workers. We have seen from the Australia Institute that this government failing to stand up for decent wages for workers could stand to cost Australia $650 million. They just do not understand the economics of taking the money out of a regional economy. It does not grow the economy; it shrinks it. It is a threat to small businesses, it is a dangerous practice, and it is the foolishness of this government that we are seeing in regard to that on display very frequently.

I particularly acknowledge the great efforts and great civic leadership of Ian Hankinson, who led the men from the depot and got a great outcome for them. But remember: part of the pressure that applied for this was the fact that there was a by-election. Otherwise I doubt the Liberal government would have come to any support of this arrangement. (Time expired)