Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As many in this place are aware, I've been a long-time advocate for patients with cancers with low survival rates. It frustrates me that, while cancer survival generally continues to improve, there are some cancers for which survival rates have languished, often due to insufficient attention or investment. The most common low-survival-rate cancer is lung cancer. It's the fifth highest incidence of cancer in Australia and is well ahead of other cancers as the leading cause of cancer deaths. Lung cancer is so deadly that it kills more Australians than breast, prostate and ovarian cancer combined. It is sadly a cancer whose patients are often stigmatised by the mistaken belief that all lung cancer is caused by smoking.

The Lung Foundation is currently campaigning for an investment which would have the potential to significantly improve outcomes for lung cancer patients—Australian government funding for 15 specialist lung cancer nurses. The call is outlined in the foundation's paper Making lung cancer a fair fight: a blueprint for reform. It's backed by a petition with over 4,000 signatures. The Australian government has invested in specialist nurses for breast cancer and prostate cancer and this has led to a significant improvement in patient outcomes for these diseases. Specialist cancer nurses can be an important part of a multidisciplinary oncology team and their roles can include but are not limited to clinical care, patient care, coordination, provision of information to patients and families, research and education, identifying and leading safety and quality improvements, advocacy and preventive health.

The Senate Select Committee into Funding for Research into Cancers with Low Survival Rates, which I chaired, recognised the benefits of specialised nurses or specialist care coordinators. Recommendation 21 of its unanimous report reads:

The committee recommends that the Australian government, in conjunction with its state and territory counterparts, works to improve access to specialist cancer care co-ordinators or nurses for low survival rate cancer patients in every state and territory.

I was disappointed to see the government simply note this recommendation. The government said in their response:

State and territory governments have primary responsibility for the employment of nurses and care coordinators.

Even accepting this point, I fail to see why the Morrison government couldn't at least work with the states and territories on a consistent approach to employing care coordinators in the areas of greatest need. If the Morrison government think states and territories should be entirely responsible for funding these positions then why would they announce $27 million in Commonwealth funding for specialist breast cancer nurses and $23 million for prostate cancer nurses?

I'm by no means arguing that the Commonwealth shouldn't invest in specialist prostrate cancer or breast cancer nurses, but I believe the Lung Foundation has put forward a very compelling argument that the case can be just as easily made for federally funded lung cancer nurse specialists. A study by the Lung Foundation shows that patients who have access to a specialist lung cancer nurse are 34 per cent more likely to receive access to treatment than those who do not. Right now, Australia has 12 full-time equivalent specialist lung cancer nurses. This equates to less than one nurse for every 1,000 lung cancer patients, which leaves Australia lagging behind many comparable nations.

A study in the Asia-Pacific Journal ofClinical Oncology found that people living with lung cancer had the highest unmet needs, had the highest levels of psychological stress, had the poorest quality of life and tended to underutilise hospital and community support services. The situation is likely to get worse because of COVID-19 with the challenges of travel restrictions and self-isolation, not to mention a reported 50 per cent fall in referrals for lung cancer patients between March and June this year. I wrote to the Minister for Health, Mr Hunt, to put to him the case that the Lung Foundation has made for funding specialist lung cancer nurses, and I received a reply from the minister's chief of staff reiterating what they told the inquiry—the state and territory governments are best placed to provide cancer care coordinators or nurses. But what the minister's office didn't explain—and I'd be interested to hear this explanation from the minister—is why he believes the case has been made for the Commonwealth funding of nurse specialists for Australians diagnosed with other types of cancer but not for lung cancer. I urge the government and Mr Hunt in particular to give this issue more serious consideration.

The other thing I want to speak about tonight is something quite different. I want to speak about the disturbing trend in Australia where increasingly you work for a company but you don't legally work for them. You might spend day in, day out working to provide services for a company, but, instead of working for them, you are in fact employed by a subcontractor which provides your labour as a service. For many people, they are now doing exactly the same job they had previously been doing for the same company, yet their employer is different. We saw the tragic effects earlier this year when dnata, which bought Qantas's in-house catering services, was unable to obtain JobKeeper for Australian workers. These workers pay taxes in Australia while providing services to an Australian airline as they had for many years before the buyout. And now Qantas is going to repeat the same dirty trick.

Qantas has received hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies, yet it's refusing to protect the jobs of its workers. They've revealed plans to outsource ground handling at major Australian airports as well as at larger regional airports, and the airports expected to be affected include Adelaide, Alice Springs, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Townsville. They are planning to axe all of their 2,400 ground, baggage and cleaning jobs and outsource them, on top of the 6,000 redundancies they announced in August. It's not good enough to get rid of workers only to rehire the same workers through another provider with lower pay and worse conditions. And it's especially not good enough when the CEO received almost $24 million last year. Qantas says it will save $100 million per year by outsourcing its ground-handling work, but where will that $100 million come from? It will come from the pockets of workers who will receive lower pay and fewer entitlements, causing inconvenience to travellers as there will be fewer workers to provide the same service. We've heard reports that some employees in the air services industry have been paid below-award wages and have been asked to work in unsafe conditions. This must not become the fate of these thousands of employees that have been proud to work for the national carrier, some for decades. This outcome would simply be un-Australian. Australian workers deserve better. Australian taxpayers deserve better.

I was a union official that represented Ansett workers when it went into liquidation almost two decades ago. It made me angry then and it still makes me angry now that workers are the ones who are forced to have their pay and conditions cut when things go bad, that workers are retrenched but top-end management keep their jobs and higher salaries while banks and other creditors manage to take their share first. Qantas has received $267 million through the JobKeeper program so far and $248 million through other government financial assistance packages. What is the benefit of this expenditure if not to keep Australians employed? Let's be very clear: Josh Frydenberg is entirely responsible for who gets JobKeeper and how much they get. It's absolutely crucial that the JobKeeper payments are going to businesses that are looking after their workforce.

Qantas will be paying a dividend in September to its shareholders, so, while crying poor, accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies and sacking thousands of employees, it is still able to shovel public money into private hands. I'd like to quote the national secretary of the Transport Workers Union, Michael Kaine, whose union represents the workers impacted in these changes and the earlier dnata decision. He said:

We are calling on the Prime Minister to intervene and call Qantas to account over its misuse of taxpayers' money. There is no dividend for the public if a company like Qantas can sack thousands of workers after receiving such financial support.

The Prime Minister has failed to date to implement a national plan on aviation. He must act now to urgently save jobs and ensure a return for the public.

I'd quickly like to thank all the Transport Workers Union members, delegates and activists who will fight to stand up for these jobs. We saw earlier this year how the actions of these members and the broader union movement resulted in the government doing a backflip on a wage subsidy which the Prime Minister had previously said would never happen.

In closing, wage subsidies should be used to protect Australian jobs. They should not be used to prop up corporate dividends and high CEO salaries. The government must hold to account employers, including Qantas, that take hundreds of millions of dollars in wage subsidies and then, in the end, sack their employees and hire them through other companies on lower pay and worse conditions. That is completely unacceptable behaviour.