Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to highlight the issue of the continued exploitation of workers in this country and the wage theft accompanying this practice. George Calombaris may well be the poster boy for wage theft in this country, but this unlawful practice within our community is insidious and widespread.

In my home state of Tasmania it was recently revealed that more than 70 seasonal workers hired by Costa Group have been exploited for their work, taken advantage of financially and forced to stay in a single home. That's right 70 people forced to live under the one roof in Shearwater in Tasmania. We know that exploitation and wage theft is alive and well in this country, and in this case displays the willingness of large corporations to adopt slave labour in their everyday work practices because of corporate greed.

These workers, who are primarily from Tonga, were employed through the federal government's Seasonal Workers Program working on berry farms owned by Costa Group. The Costa Group made a statement detailing that the welfare of the workers was 'a priority for them'. Well, their actions, the actions of the employees, tell a very different story. I hope that the Costa Group faces the full force of the law and are not able to, or permitted to, hire seasonal workers again.

I call on the Morrison government to start taking wage theft and unscrupulous and unlawful exploitation of seasonal workers seriously in this country. No company should be permitted to get away with this type of treatment of our fellow human beings.

This, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. The practice of wage theft and worker exploitation is widespread across our country. It has become a widespread business model from retail and hospitality to agriculture and service industries across the country. This is real. Big businesses like 7-Eleven, Caltex, Pizza Hut, Domino's, Red Rooster, and the list goes on, must take responsibility for their flawed business models which allow wage theft and other exploitation practices. A recent audit of job advertisements with particular language criteria found that 78 per cent of businesses advertised rates of pay below the minimum award wage. People are not being paid for a fair day's work. They're not being paid their superannuation. They're not being paid for their breaks. They are not being paid for their overtime.

I commend the work of the Australian Workers Union Tasmanian branch and the national branch for alerting the community to this sickening practice. I note that the Retail Supply Chain Alliance is calling on the federal government to review Costa's right to hire seasonal workers. The Retail Supply Chain Alliance is made up of the Australian Workers Union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association and the transport union. They are doing everything in their power to ensure that these exploitative practices are not allowed to continue in this country.

Not only were these 70 individuals forced to stay in the one house, after working a full day picking berries; they were also forced to pay $100 a week in rent each—when a property of this size would have been rented out on the market for just $600 a week. I also note that the workers were forced to pay for transport to and from the work site every day—at a price that could only be described as criminal. What has happened here is truly sickening. These people were exploited and now they have been rescued. But my concern is that this is an industry-wide practice and there are so many more people being exploited, when they deserve better conditions to work in, better pay, better treatment, better accommodation and free transport. There are no ifs and buts about this. These workers have been rescued, and I commend these unions for the work that they have done.

We must ensure that all workers are treated fairly. We cannot allow this sort of practice to continue. I'm calling on the Morrison government and the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business to take this issue of wage theft and the exploitation of people with the seriousness with which it deserves. We would not tolerate this for our fellow Australians, and we should never allow foreign workers coming to this country to do jobs to try to support their families to be exploited in such a terrible, degrading manner. It's unacceptable.