David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that at 8:30 today eight proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Cameron:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

Standing up for workers, including restoring penalty rates for 700,000 workers, giving workers a tax break of up to $1,063 and cracking down on dodgy labour hire and 457 visas.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal proposals have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If ever there was a clear difference between this rabble of a government, this government that their own Prime Minister called the muppets, this government that their former Prime Minister calls mad, then it's the position Labor is taking on standing up for workers and their families. What we have said clearly is that we will restore the penalty rates of 700,000 workers across this country. These are some of the poorest and most disadvantaged workers in the country. What we have seen has been a process of pressurising the Fair Work Commission. There was minister after minister of this coalition government who stood up and said we needed more flexibility on penalty rates. We had member after member of the coalition government talking about the need to get into a modern economy and get rid of penalty rates. The pressure was put on publicly by this government and by business. Unfortunately, the Fair Work Commission made an amazing blunder by taking penalty rates away from some of the poorest workers in this country. Labor will restore those penalty rates because we understand how important penalty rates are to working families across this country.

When I first came to Australia in 1973, as a maintenance fitter, without my penalty rates I would not have been able to put food on the table, pay the rent and look after my family. It was my penalty rates that actually put me in a position to be able to pay the rent in Kingsford in Sydney, which was pretty high by any standard, and then put food on the table and actually do a little bit for my family to get ahead. It was penalty rates that did it. Without penalty rates, I would have been in all sorts of trouble. My basic wage in those days was $87 a week and I was paying $50 a week in rent. It was my penalty rates that allowed me to actually live a basic life, a decent life, when I first came to Australia.

This is a problem for 700,000 workers across this country. I can't believe that the National Party would have been party to this push against penalty rates, because in many regional economies—and I was in Albury-Wodonga recently and down in Bega the week before last—working people were saying they're doing it tough and small businesses were saying they're doing it tough. When the money from the penalty rates comes out of our local economies, businesses do it tough. We are saying we will restore penalty rates. There are good economic reasons to do it, there are good social reasons to do it and there are reasons of fairness in this country. So we will restore penalty rates. This is Labor standing up for workers.

We will also provide a tax break to workers at the lower end of earnings in this country. We'll provide a tax break of up to $1,063 per annum. That's in sharp contrast to the coalition, who wanted to hand $80 billion to the big end of town in tax cuts and wanted to hand $12 billion in tax cuts to the banks. How crazy can you get? How ideologically driven can you get that when workers are doing it tough, when workers are having their penalty rates cut, you want to hand billions of dollars over to the banks and the big end of town?

We've said that we'll crack down on dodgy labour hire companies. Labour hire companies are still out there forcing workers onto individual contracts. They are forcing workers who are not self-employed into self-employed positions. That is unacceptable. The labour hire companies that are out there behaving badly need to be brought under some control and under some regulation. We need workers to get a fair go if they're working for a labour hire company. Labour hire companies should be registered so that we know only legitimate labour hire companies are going to operate.

We want to ensure that Australian workers get access to jobs and are not replaced by overseas workers on 457 visas unnecessarily. Labor has always taken the view that there is a need for overseas labour. I am a product of Labor's previous policies of bringing workers in from overseas, but I came into this country as a permanent migrant and I think I brought some skills, through my trade, to this country, and that is a legitimate position. But now we've seen 457 visas being used unnecessarily. Under the mining boom, sure, there was a massive increase in the number of 457 visas. That's because the country needed those skills. Now that we don't need those skills as much as we did, there should not be the use of 457 visas unnecessarily.

Workers are not getting their fair share in this country. We've had decades of economic growth in this country. But what is it for workers? Stagnating wages. You hear all these arguments about jobs being created. It's not the coalition that's created the jobs; it's business that has created these jobs. Business has created these jobs, but the workers are not getting a pay rise. The workers are not getting a cent more. Workers' wages are stagnating, and that is a massive problem for the living standards of working families. Their standards of living are declining. They're battling to pay their mortgage; they're battling to pay their rent. Many, many workers can't afford to go on a modest holiday in this country. They're cutting back on small luxuries. Battling workers can't take their kids to the movies. They can't send their kids on school excursions. Once in a blue moon, they might be able to get a takeaway—that's a luxury for many working people in this country.

It's so far from the reality of the coalition members, who are living a life that many workers do not understand and could never contemplate. Yet these people on a $200,000-a-year basic wage are saying to workers: 'You must get rid of your penalty rates. Your wages should stagnate. Just believe in us and somehow you'll get a pay increase.' It's absolute ideological nonsense from this government. Workers are battling to pay their electricity bills. After five years of this coalition, there is no certainty for investment in the power industry. That's because you've got the extremists on the other side who don't believe in climate change, who are simply trying to push an extreme ideological agenda on this country that has left investment in renewables stagnating. Investment in renewables should be massively growing, as every modern economy is looking to do. This is a position of: we need a consistent policy. The coalition are incapable of providing a consistent policy on power and on climate change, and that means that workers are paying the price. It's because of the incompetence and lack of policy from the coalition government.

Private health care is beyond the reach of the majority of low-paid workers. They can't afford private health care. These prices are going up more and more. This is just another example of the problems for working people. The Centre for Future Work have done an analysis. They've looked at it, and they've come up with a view that workers are getting about $16,800 less pay a year due to the labour share of the gross domestic product declining. More money is going to the big end of town, more money is going to employers and less money is coming to workers. That has resulted in a $16,800-a-year less share of the economy for every worker. The OECD has seen the highest incidence of temporary work. CEO remuneration as a multiple of medium wages in Australia was 15 to one. It is now 180 to one over a 40-year period. The big end of town is doing okay; executives are doing okay. Workers' wages are stagnating. The government have got no answers; the government are on their last legs. No wonder that their own people describe them as 'muppets' and as 'mad', because they are the 'M and Ms'. (Time expired)

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That last speech should have been finished with the words, 'Written, spoken and authorised by the ACTU.' That's because, really, that is all that the Senate has been subjected to—the nonsense of the lobotomised zombies. Senator Cameron himself described his colleagues in the Labor Party as 'lobotomised zombies'. They're not my words but Senator Cameron's words, and how true they are a descriptor of not only the Labor Party but also, of course, Senator Cameron himself.

Let's have a look at the facts. First of all, let's go to the very end of the motion or proposition put forward by Senator Cameron. It's about cracking down on dodgy labour hire 457 visas. All I would ask the Australian people listening to this debate to do is look at what Labor does, not at what Labor says. That's because when Mr Shorten was the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, 457 visas grew from 48,000 to 68,486. The coalition came to government, and within the first year we were able to peal it back to around about 52,000. Today, it stands at 12,000, which is about 20 per cent of what Mr Shorten presided over. Yet we have the audacity of an Australian Labor Party frontbencher coming into this place suggesting that our 80 per cent reduction of 457 visas from when Mr Shorten was the responsible minister to now is somehow a great discredit to us, because Senator Cameron and the Labor Party protect workers. I don't think so. Their record speaks so much louder than their rhetoric today.

It is this Liberal-National Party government that promised to create, through economic stimulus, an extra one million jobs in this country if we were to have been elected in 2013. We were ridiculed by the ACTU. We were ridiculed by their senators in this place for making such an assertion. We came in on that promise well before time. And, indeed, we have been able, through our economic stimulus, to assist the private sector to create, in one year alone, 400,000 new jobs for our fellow Australians. That is 400,000 households that today are able to be self-sufficient, which otherwise they would not have been. We all know that the benefit of employment is better mental health, better physical health, better self-esteem and better social interaction. The social good of employment, I would argue, nearly outweighs the economic benefits of employment. This is the social good and the economic good that we as a government have been able to deliver. That is why the welfare bill in this country has been able to be reduced, because the best form of welfare is the provision of employment. That is what we as a government have sought to deliver.

Turning to my home state of Tasmania, when the Greens-Labor government was in power with Mr Shorten as a minister, the unemployment rate in my home state was 8.1 per cent. Today, it is below six per cent. That means thousands of my fellow Tasmanians have been taken off the welfare system and gone into employment, where they have self-sufficiency and where they have certainty.

Now let me expose the monstrous lie that the ACTU and the Australian Labor Party seek to peddle about penalty rates. Penalty rates have not been abolished. Penalty rates in four awards were reduced, not by the government but by Mr Bill Shorten's handpicked Fair Work commissioners. They made the decision, five Fair Work commissioners, and they were all appointed by the Australian Labor Party government under legislation that Mr Shorten deliberately amended prior to the demise of the Labor-Greens government, forcing the Fair Work Commission to have a look at penalty rates on a regular basis. So who's the architect of the reduction of penalty rates in these four awards? None other than Mr Bill Shorten of the Australian Labor Party. Yet they have the audacity to come in here and seek to claim, and blame, the coalition for a decision made by the Australian Labor Party's mates.

Even worse, when Mr Shorten was asked on radio if he would accept the decision of the independent umpire—and that is what the Fair Work Commission is; you have to accept their decisions—Mr Shorten was asked: 'Will you accept their findings, given this is an independent body assessing penalty rates for Sunday, if you're Prime Minister?' Mr Shorten: 'Yes.' Neil Mitchell: 'You'll accept them?' Bill Shorten: 'Yes.' Neil Mitchell: 'Even if they reduce Sunday penalty rates?' Bill Shorten: 'Well, I said I would accept the independent tribunal.' That is what Mr Shorten said he would do. Now, for cheap political opportunism, he has changed his mind. So I say to my fellow Australians who might be concerned about their penalty rates: this is the man that engineered your reduction in penalty rates. He is the man that then said that he would 'accept the decision if it were to reduce your penalty rates'. And today, hand on heart, he says, 'Believe me, I'm going to change it'—when he was the one who ensured this reduction in penalty rates would actually occur. Mr Shorten was the architect. He is responsible. He needs to bear the blame. And it is the height of audacity, the height of duplicity, the height of speaking with a forked tongue, for the Australian Labor Party to come to this chamber and assert that somehow the coalition are responsible for a reduction in penalty rates.

But why did Labor's hand-picked Fair Work commissioners come to the determination that it might be a good idea to reduce Sunday penalty rates in a few areas? Because they accepted that it mitigated against the prospect of employment for our other fellow Australians. And so the Fair Work Commission said that, if you were to reduce the Sunday penalty rates by a relatively small margin, it would create extra employment opportunities. Senator Cameron, the ACTU and the Labor Party will never talk about the 400,000 jobs that have been created in recent times, because they know the economic policies we have pursued and the reality that made the Fair Work Commissioners come to the decision that the penalty rates regime was costing jobs.

Here we are with an extra 400,000 Australians in employment. Under an Australian Labor Party government, going by their record—not what they say but what they actually do—we would have another 50,000 or so 457 visa holders displacing Australian workers and we would undoubtedly have more of our fellow Australians unemployed. When it comes to looking after workers, the Liberal-National Party record shows that it has not amended the legislation—like Mr Shorten did— and did not appoint the commissioners that led to the reduction in penalty rates. In fact, we are the party that has presided over 400,000 more jobs in Australia in just one year and the creation of over one million jobs since we came to government. More importantly, we have seen the shattering of the 457 visas that were given to people by 80 per cent compared to when Mr Shorten was in government. So the party for the workers is in fact the Liberal-National Party government, which has a record—unlike Labor, which only has rhetoric.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Cameron would recall, One Nation supported his fair work amendment bill in 2017 to protect take-home pay and penalty rates for Australian workers. It would appear that the Labor Party either has a short memory of my support and the support of all One Nation senators or these are disgraceful untruths designed to discredit One Nation because we're having a huge impact on your vote in blue-collar regions like Capricornia, Maranoa, Herbert and other electorates across the country. The hypocrisy of Labor is laughable, when you say Labor is protecting Aussie jobs and weekend penalty rates. The Labor Party happily undermined Australian workers less than a month ago by supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP-11. This free trade agreement has given away at least 5,000 Australian jobs to countries like Mexico, whose workers are prepared to slave their guts out for $6.07 a day. Under the TPP-11, passed by Labor and the coalition, you gave away Australian jobs to Vietnamese workers who don't mind working for $2.70 a day in their home country. Honestly, Labor sicken me with their hypocrisy and cock-and-bull stories about being a party for the workers. I'm sorry, but you've never been a party for the workers. These days the Labor Party are about themselves.

What credibility Labor had left as a party went up in smoke last month when they all voted in favour of the TPP-11 free trade agreement. Let me read you a little excerpt from a letter I just received yesterday from the national secretary of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union, Michael O'Connor. I think the Deputy President and my Senate colleagues know who I'm referring to here. He's not only the big boss of the CFMEU but also the brother of Labor's shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, Brendan O'Connor. Listen to what the CFMEU national secretary says to me in his letter. It's very kind. I almost blushed when I first read it. For the sake of our snowflake Labor members, I'm giving you a trigger warning just in case you want to block your ears. Here we go. Just remember these are words from Michael O'Connor, the national secretary of the CFMEU: 'Dear Senator, I write to you to firstly acknowledge your efforts and thank you for the principled position that you took by voting against the enabling legislation for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, TPP-11. The TPP was and is bad for workers and bad for the country.' This is Michael O'Connor writing to me. The CFMEU national secretary then says: 'The A Fair Go for Australians in Trade Bill 2018 is due to, in no small part, One Nation's great work.' Isn't it lovely of the CFMEU's national secretary to write to little old me, Pauline Hanson?

I can't believe the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union is telling me One Nation is the best friend workers have in Australia—not Labor. What a kick in the guts to Labor. How do you feel? You sold out the CFMEU and their members, for what? I'll say it again: One Nation is officially the best friend to workers, and I've got it in writing from the biggest union in this country. The CFMEU says, 'One Nation takes a principled stand on jobs in this country.' That sounds to me like the national secretary of the CFMEU is saying, 'Labor don't have principles, but One Nation does.'

Already Mark Latham has joined One Nation as state leader ahead of the New South Wales state elections. Labor better get used to more One Nation members being elected across every state in this country. We are, as the CFMEU say, principled. I welcome anyone who shares my support of Australian jobs to join me as we fight the two failed parties who continue to sell out workers in this country.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development (Senate)) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I just ask Senator Hanson and Senator Georgiou to hang around. I'm not going to have a crack at you. I think there's something else you need to hear, while you're being the best friends of workers. I would request your support on what I'm going to talk about now.

We're worried about 457-class visas, but let me tell you there's a bigger plague in this nation. Border protection are very well aware of this, because of the road safety inquiry that I chaired three years ago—I think that was when we put it up. Senator Williams is very supportive of our concerns here, because I wrote a report that was bipartisan. He's my co-chair. He's my partner in the work that we did here. I'll tell you where the problem is. The problem we have in this nation is the exploitation of the foreign visa system. This is where we really have to start concentrating. It should come as, and would not come as, a surprise in this chamber here that this started. There was an incident on the M5—I believe it's the highway in Sydney that goes under the airport—where a K&S B-double, on a Friday evening, pulled up. It shouldn't have been on there. It was over height. It couldn't get under the bridge. Fortunately, it's a very rare occurrence because most of our truckies are very well trained and traversed in where they should be and where they shouldn't be. The problem was that, when the RMS turned up and the police turned up, there were two drivers in the cab. One wouldn't get out of the cab and the other one got out and said that, between the pair of them, they couldn't back out the B-double. For those who aren't trucking operators like me, part of your training is having to actually back the bucket of nuts and bolts out. You have to be able to do that. You have to be able to couple it all up and take it off safely without it falling apart. Not only could they not back out the B-double but they couldn't uncouple the B-double so they could do a U-turn. We're talking about a company—K&S—that was one of the most respected companies in Australia when it was under the ownership of Allan Scott, a very, very decent employer. The RMS had to uncouple it while one driver refused to get out. Both of the drivers weren't Australian drivers; they were from overseas. Before anyone has a crack at me, I've made it very clear: this is not about attacking people from overseas; it's about attacking the mongrels who exploit our visa system, and they happen to be of the same race. They get them here, offer them a house and say, 'If you open your mouth, you're out and you're deported back.' That was bad enough.

What made it worse was that, when Senator O'Sullivan and I wrote to RMS and the police and asked, 'What happened when the truck was put back together?' they said they waved them goodbye and wished them safe travel to where they were going. The good folk of RMS and the police were only operating under the crappy laws they have in New South Wales. The minister at the time went missing. It was a man, and he got the 'big A', and then a woman took over. It was the same woman who thinks you should put electric shocks through steering wheels to keep truck drivers awake. I'm not making this stuff up.

Anyway, lo and behold, I was in Sydney last week. I had the pleasure of being with 500 transport workers at the TWU's New South Wales conference. There were 500 men and women in that room from all facets of the transport industry, whether it be road transport, warehousing, aviation or buses—it didn't matter; they all had the same objective: they want to be safe and they want other road users to be safe. That's great. I was informed of an accident at a place called Fairy Meadow. They tell me that Fairy Meadow is on the way to Wollongong. I don't know. But, to cut a long story short, there's a big hill, and a rigid truck came along at 7 o'clock in the morning. The rigid truck driver was a foreign truck driver. Anyway, the brakes failed through an intersection. Thank Christ, no-one was killed. He ploughed into a McDonald's car park. Can you imagine that, at 7 o'clock in the morning at McDonald's? Thank God, no-one was killed. There were a couple of people injured. Now Border Protection are involved because the driver, allegedly—are you ready for this; Senator Hanson, I'll need your help in the next parliament—was on a student visa. The investigation is on.

This mob are called Hari Om. Try to Google them and, if you can find out who they are, please help me out. They're a massive company in India and they've got some dealings here. They have 11 trucks here in New South Wales—one smashed up, of course. RMS grabbed the other 10. Every single one of them was defected. They were defected through bald tyres, seatbelts not working and brakes not working. I spoke to the head inspector of RMS today, and he told me that, of the 10 vehicles still on the road, six of them have been grounded. Hari Om, whoever the hell they are, nearly went broke a couple of times. There are notices of proposed deregistration from ASIC that I found from 2013 and 2016. They actually do a heck of a lot of work for Toll and TNT. In fact, I'm told they do more TNT.

One of the biggest problems we have in this nation is chain of responsibility. Senator O'Sullivan and I wrote a magnificent report after two years of hard work. I'm running out of time. I want to be very quick. One of the recommendations we addressed said:

The committee recommends that, if not adequately addressed through the recommendations of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection comprehensively review visa arrangements to address systematic or organised abuse in the transport industry.

Senator O'Sullivan and I addressed another recommendation, which said:

The committee recommends that all visa holders with heavy vehicle driving licences undergo driver skill tests before their heavy vehicle driving licences are recognised in Australia.

We said a lot more. We know there's a problem. We know that the visa system is being exploited. Like we said, we are seriously of the opinion that these poor devils are recruited from India, come over here—they may be studying something at university. They may come up with the cure for cancer—I don't know; I hope they do. They'll start doing part-time B-double operations between Brisbane and Sydney because they have nothing better to do, or drive trucks for this other company, Hari Om.

If we're going to get real serious, this is the squeeze on the supply chain. Let's make this very, very clear. You're not from trucking stock, but you have worked this out. If a transport company has bald tyres, they've got foreign drivers on student visas, their brakes aren't working and the seatbelts aren't working, yet they're the third link in the supply chain—no, they're the fourth. There's the customer, whoever the customers are. I'd love to know whose freight they're carting, because I'd love to contact the company and say, 'Did you know your freight's on the back of these buckets of crap?' That's the first thing I'd love to know. Then there's the transport company, being TNT—I'm told TNT is one of the worst, with this Hari Om. I'm ex-TNT, so that wouldn't surprise me. I became a unionist because of TNT, not because I was born one. They made me one, so I'm not going to let TNT off the hook. Then you have this other transport company—and I've spoken to the manager today—DSE, who subcontracts to the Indian, Hari Om. There are four in the supply chain, so what the heck are these people being paid, for crying out loud? Hari Om is exploiting the visa system, putting dangerous vehicles out on the road and trying to dodge the TWU. The TWU are now doing the investigation. Can you believe that? Border Protection is just checking on the visa and the immigration stuff. The TWU is out there wanting the time and wages, the safety management plans and the fatigue management plans. This is not the work of the TWU; this should be the government. You can't wait to put your claws in when taxing those from the transport industry. You steal 40 cents a litre off us in the fuel tax excise; it doesn't go back into the roads.

Senator Hanson, across the chamber to you and Senator Georgiou, this is a serious problem for our nation. It's not brand new. The supply chain is being squeezed. We all have children, grandchildren or allies out on the road. We want them to be safe. We have to absolutely work together to put a system in place where you cannot squeeze the supply chain. At the end of the day, the companies have to be responsible. It's all very well having a chain of responsibility and all very well having fatigue management, but, if you turn a blind eye as soon as something like this happens—you go and whack over the couple of truck drivers and you still let that rotten system go on—what the hell are we doing in terms of road safety, let alone protecting other road users and protecting a valuable industry that, I can tell you, is really highly disregarded in this building?

That is just one tiny little complaint—well, not tiny; it's not tiny. What I'm trying to say is that we wrote this report in good faith. This is a joint report from Senator O'Sullivan and myself. We presented an interim report. We tabled it on 3 May 2016. We took this damn seriously. We did a final report on October 2017. Since then, we've had three ministers. We've not even had a response to say, 'Hey, for crying out loud, not only must we make the roads safer for everyone on the roads but also, please, Border Force, get in there and tighten up on the exploitation of foreign workers.' It's not good enough to have these poor buggers being promised the world, brought out from other countries and employed by some grubby labour hire person who's from the same country who turns a blind eye—and TNT keeps employing these other ratbags.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always a pleasure to speak on these matters of reference put forward to the chamber by the Labor Party. Unlike the other speakers, I won't concentrate a lot on what the problems are, because I've got a solution. I think we should form—and I'm talking about the penalty rates—an independent commission. That's what we should do. We should form a commission completely independent of government. No government influence or input. Sit this commission way out of arm's reach of government. We'll allow them to make the decisions to meet the national interest tests and the industry tests. They can make the decisions around workers' terms and conditions, particularly around the application of penalty rates.

Of course, unfortunately for me, someone else thought of that before I did. The Australian Labor Party formed an independent commission at arm's length from government. There was no interference from government, either their government or the current coalition government. In 2009 the former Labor government put together the Fair Work Commission. That was their solution to this problem. Of course, as is the case with most things, when you've had a change of chairs, from opposition you will criticise the government of the day over these issues even though you were responsible for the architectural framework that was put in place to deal with such matters independently and completely at arm's length from the government.

When I realised that this wasn't an original thought, I thought I need to come up with another solution. Of course Labor's solution is to make Prime Minister the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, Mr Shorten. Surely to God he'll look after the workers. Surely to God he'll make sure that penalty rates and terms and conditions are looked after. I thought I didn't capture it with my first thought, but I've captured it with my second. Surely having Mr Shorten put in charge of terms and conditions for workers, particularly around penalty rates, will get bipartisan support. Alas, when I raised that with my staff and advisers, they said: 'Hold on a minute, big feller. There's a problem with that too.' I said, 'What's the problem with that?' They said that the last time Bill Shorten was in charge of things like enterprise bargaining agreements—and Labor senators who take an interest in this should google 'Bill Shorten 1998 enterprise bargaining agreement'—

Jim Molan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

AWU.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'AWU'—it cost 5,000 workers more than $400 million in lost wages over a decade. I should sit down now. I've put forward two solutions. Both of them I imagine would be unacceptable to the Australian Labor Party.

Of course, the burn on this is that the Australian Labor Party of my father's generation and of my youth was interested in workers. They were the ones who were interested in workers. They were the workers' party. I have said here before—and it's worth repeating—that my dear old dad was a devotee of the Labor Party. I have said before that he would punch his hand through his coffin lid tomorrow and mark their box, irrespective of who the candidate was. That was his and my mother's lifetime pattern of voting. But they were supporting a different Labor Party. They would not have supported a Labor Party who entered into enterprise bargaining agreements that cost 5,000 workers $400 million in lost wages over a decade. Of course, this conduct by Mr Shorten was repeated with employees of Target and Just Jeans. If you do the maths, the loss to workers through their terms and conditions, particularly around penalty rates, is probably by now in the order of $1 billion.

I will go back just to make a point on that. In 1999 the public holiday award rate for a level 1 cleaner was $36.38. That was reduced under that enterprise bargaining agreement to $16.28. They lost a clear $20 an hour. I don't want to reflect on cleaners—I myself have done a bit of that over time—but, if you want to identify a blue-collar worker who is working in not the most appealing job and who is probably lower on the socioeconomic strata than most other blue-collar workers, it would be the cleaners. How do you go to bed as a Labor man after you've reduced their public holiday award rate by $20.10? How does that work? How do you say to the workers, who have looked to that party for decades, 'Stick with us. We're the party of the people. We're the party of the workers, particularly blue collar workers and the like. Stick with us and we'll improve your terms and conditions of employment,' only to reduce them?

Let's recap on my two failed ideas. The first was thinking I'd have bipartisan support. The other was to establish a Fair Work Commission, and I must confess my ignorance to that until my staff alerted me to it. There is a Fair Work Commission that was put in place by the Australian Labor Party to be arm's length and to govern such matters. Now we hear in this place constantly their criticism of the independent commission, which they formed, because they're not happy with what's happening there. Now their alternative is, for the Australian people and Australian workers, to give Mr Shorten the top job. He'll fix this for you. He will see, in the blink of an eye, reductions in your wages, and it won't affect his sleeping patterns because he's got a long chronic history of doing just that.

Things have improved for workers in this country under this coalition government. I attach myself to some of the remarks of Senator Sterle. He was right about the incidents that we've talked about, and there's no question in my mind that there are issues around our 457 visa system that need to be tidied up, particularly in circumstances that he related. And there is exploitation of some workers under this system in agricultural industries, where the brokers who present them as a workforce treat some of them very poorly and, in fact, unlawfully. So I attach myself; I don't walk away from those remarks. I've been very vocal on it up to this point in time. I've made representations to the relevant ministers and I'm satisfied that the efforts that they have underway will eventually mitigate those circumstances.

But I've got to tell you: to have the Australian Labor Party come and start to lecture us on terms and conditions for workers in this country, when this government has provided so many more people with a job under Abbott and Turnbull—and I'm sure that will continue under Morrison, to fix an economy that was failing as a result of the legacies of the Australian Labor Party—I find it a bit rich. But I know why it's happening. I said in an earlier contribution today those opposite have got nothing else worthwhile to talk about; otherwise they wouldn't come in here with these subject matters and give us the opportunity to belt them around the ears. They've been done over twice today. It's because they've got no substantive issue that they find the government vulnerable on that we'd find difficult to defend. They've got nothing else to say, and the Australian people who are watching this—I hope they're all having a snooze and not spending their time watching the Senate—need to take note just as we have here today.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to make a contribution to this debate on this matter of public importance. I specifically want to talk about the need for governments as employers at all levels to stand up for workers and actually bargain in good faith, actually care about their workforce, about their wages, about their working conditions, their health and safety, and about them as people, as critical members of our communities delivering vital public services. For five long years here in Canberra and in my home state of Tasmania, we have endured Liberal governments that actively seek to undermine and undervalue the vital work of our public servants. Their key tactic is very low wage offers that would see workers' pay not keep up with inflation. And they use the threat of job losses if workers don't agree to their cruel requests. This appalling behaviour leaves many public servants in a bind: take a small wage increase, or take industrial action.

I'm extremely proud of the thousands of public servants across Tasmania who joined their union and together pushed for fairness. Of course, under the current system, the odds are stacked against workers, and a desperate Liberal government will do whatever it takes. They launch highly personal attacks on our public servants. Show me a nurse who doesn't want to care for a patient, a teacher who doesn't want to inspire a student or a public servant who doesn't want to make sure that our government functions. It's so easy for a minister to issue a threatening statement, to misrepresent the situation and to attack the workers.

We've seen a lot of it lately in Tasmania—desperate ministers are playing the worker rather than trying to negotiate in good faith or even to bargain at all. The Tasmanian Liberal government copied the federal Liberal approach to public sector wages, setting an indefinite wage cap below inflation and refusing to negotiate. After years of wages going backwards and as negotiations stalled, Tasmanian public servants reluctantly launched some industrial action. When the Liberal government refused to negotiate, the public servants, rightly, increased their industrial action. So far, all we've seen are personal attacks and misrepresentation of the industrial action.

Just this week, the Tasmanian Liberal police minister, Mr Michael Ferguson, launched a bizarre and untrue attack on workers in Forensic Science Services Tasmania, inaccurately claiming that their measured and sensible industrial action would make Tasmania less safe and allow crooks to get off scot-free, with up to 15 criminals unable to be pursued by police each week. He then said that victims of crime would suffer the most from the union's tactics. Of course, the facts couldn't be further from this. The public servants then cleared up the matter: their industrial action would simply create a backlog which could at any time be resolved with additional resources allocated by the government. What a pathetic beat-up by a desperate government, out of touch with Tasmanians.

Of course, it doesn't end there. The Tasmanian police minister is also the Tasmanian health minister. He has overseen a health crisis that has plagued our state for years and he's refusing to bargain in good faith with our state's overworked and underpaid nurses and midwives, who have also been forced to take industrial action. This is action which, of course, limits activity in our state's hospitals and action which the minister should recognise is entirely within the rights of the nurses and midwives, and which he should seek to end by presenting a fair pay offer to Tasmanian public servants—not a pay offer which is hundreds of dollars a year below the inflation rate, not an offer which undermines Tasmania's ability to attract new nurses and not an offer that would make our nurses the lowest paid in the country when our cost of living continues to rise.

This pattern is repeated across the state, with teachers, nurses, firefighters, cleaners, paramedics and others taking reasonable action in pursuit of a decent pay rise. I commend Tasmanian union members for their unity, their courage and their camaraderie across the movement. I say firmly to the Tasmanian government: end this impasse, recognise that your offer is too low, come to the table with a fair deal and negotiate—and I mean negotiate fairly and equitably with those who the workers have chosen to represent them. Tasmanians who are public servants deserve a pay rise and they deserve a decent pay rise.

Jim Molan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on two of the three issues that are raised in this MPI: standing up for workers and tax breaks for workers. I will conclude this debate by making a number of points. I will talk about certain histories that go back certain years and, if I have time, I will certainly talk about the tax aspect.

A number of points that I will make really go to what Senator Abetz would have called an 'inconvenient fact'. In 1998, and when head of the Australian Workers Union, the AWU, Mr Bill Shorten signed an enterprise agreement with Cleanevent. We all know this. This saw around 5,000 workers lose as much as $400 million in wages according to The Australian newspaper. This deal saw Cleanevent employees signed up to the AWU membership unless they explicitly opted out. It turns out that up to 90 per cent of Cleanevent employees were added to the AWU membership rolls without necessarily knowing that this had occurred. This was, by any stretch of the imagination, a dirty deal between Cleanevent's management and Mr Bill Shorten's AWU, made at the expense of ordinary workers. It was done to reduce the wages for Cleanevent, who were paying cleaners well below what they were earning in rival companies, while Mr Shorten's AWU benefited from additional members, many of whom were signed up without their knowledge.

But it wasn't only in 1998 that we saw this happen; it wasn't only under Mr Bill Shorten's AWU that such dirty tricks occurred. In 2010, after Mr Paul Howes took over from Mr Bill Shorten as head of the union, the AWU:

… struck a deal with major cleaning contractor Cleanevent in 2010 to keep casual cleaners on lower rates of pay and save the company $1.5 million in salary costs, the commission heard on Monday.

In return, Cleanevent would pay the AWU $25,000 a year as membership fees for casual cleaners.

The Cleanevent senior executive who gave final sign-off on the agreement, Julianne Page, at first told the commission she could not explain why an email from the company's head of HR said the union would not agree to having a trade-off for lower wages listed in the same document as a payment for membership.

In a May, 2010 email to Ms Page, HR executive Michael Robinson wrote: "It would be crazy for the union to put that down on a page and to be honest I wouldn't feel happy with it being on the same document either."

Ms Page told the court she supposed it "would look bad for the union".

"It would look like it was some sort of payoff," she said.

… … …

Cleanevent employees were not told of the arrangement, the court heard, and it was not explained in a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding that bound workers to the lower rates of pay of a 2006 agreement.

They were also not told they had been signed up as union members, the court heard.

… … …

Internal Cleanevent emails tendered to the commission also show Mr Robinson discussing structuring pay rises to "make the AWU look fantastic to their members".

"If we agree to a 0% increase for these casuals and then give them a hit in year 2 and 3 the union can claim that because of their membership they went into bat for them and got them an increase, which will make the AWU look fantastic to their members and won't hurt your bottom line," Mr Robinson wrote to colleagues including Ms Page during discussion of the agreement.

The commission has heard previously that increased membership is an indicator of a successful union and can give it greater influence within the Australian Labor Party.

So is this standing up for workers? How do you go to bed as a Labor man doing this? Why does the Labor Party always attack every institution whose role it is to actually stand up for workers when unions act so appallingly?

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no other speakers, we'll move to consideration of documents.