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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia I have a duty to raise and fix issues that are both hurting and concerning everyday Australians. As a senator, I work for the people. Tonight, I raise a matter of great concern for everyday Australians, particularly our hardworking coalminers.

Australian workers are feeling afraid for their jobs, for their livelihoods and for their futures. Workers need fairness, integrity, trust and accountability. I'm concerned for the many workers and businesses, small and large, that have suffered from state and federal government COVID restrictions. Business leaders and workers are all looking for direction from this government, yet at the same time a government authority is doing the wrong thing and abusing workers.

What I've witnessed since coalminer Stuart Bonds and I took up the cause of the exploited, abused and discarded Hunter Valley casual coalminers is pointing to potential systemic failures and possible corruption inside a government agency. This is an agency that Hunter Valley CFMMEU bosses and Minerals Council of New South Wales executives jointly govern and direct. We Australians cannot afford for our own government to continue shonky behaviour at a time when we should be spending our money wisely.

Thanks to Stuart Bonds' voluntary help for abandoned workers, like Simon Turner and others, the Coal LSL scam was uncovered. Simon Turner and many workers wrote for help to their local MPs, including Joel Fitzgibbon, six times, and to this day Joel Fitzgibbon has ignored their letters six times. Joel Fitzgibbon has been the member for Hunter since 1996, so it's surprising that he does not know that coalminers are the key to this area's future. The agency involved is the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Corporation, better known as Coal LSL, an Australian government corporation established to regulate and manage long service leave entitlements on behalf of eligible employees in the black coal mining industry. What I hear is that governance isn't just lacking; it's completely absent. I'm yet to hear why casuals get a different long service leave rate to permanents on the same rosters doing the same work. Why? As an example, Coal LSL's system seems incapable of checking whether an employee actually receives their correct long service leave entitlement. Coal LSL just accepts an employer's letter and pays the employer. There's no validation or checking of entitlement payments to employees. A recent analysis of information that Coal LSL themselves provided reveals evidence of duplication, even triplication, of transactions paid to employers.

Their reporting, recently supplied to me, is unclear. Levy reimbursements during 2018, for example, include a category for details 'not readily available'. What does that mean? Another example are the $264,000 of refunds, not reimbursements, paid out from July 2017 to November 2018. What are these refunds? Where's the transparency? Coal LSL makes lump sum payments that again make reconciliation complex and difficult. For example, one of BHP's operational services entities in the Hunter Valley received $187,881.77 in a single transaction in May 2020. For who? It seems that Coal LSL may not be able to confirm employees are even real people as they do not collect ABN or tax file numbers; they simply get a name and a date of birth. They're operating in the Dark Ages and need a modern system to prevent fraud.

In some cases, we've heard of companies in Singleton being reimbursed for coal long service leave even though they don't work in coal mining. In one case, Coal LSL paid reimbursements totalling approximately $57,000 to the wife of the owner of a Queensland company with no state office. Why? We have learnt of an employee not receiving onboarding information about the Coal LSL scheme, particularly with regard to the employee option to opt out of the scheme and save money. Recently, a coalminer reported that Coal LSL debited his entitlement for 250 hours of long service leave when he actually had not taken any leave from his employer. Where's the governance? Concerns have been expressed to me that Coal LSL's current processes might enable a bogus company to register and then to possibly launder money through Coal LSL and then reclaim the funds cleaned and available to be transferred to criminals. Where are the checks in the system? The CEO—listen to this!—whose annual remuneration is a staggering $430,187, and her governance officer have clearly been asleep at the wheel.

I have personally challenged Coal LSL many times at Senate estimates, and they don't understand how entitlements are accrued, invested, reconciled and paid to individual coalminers. The CEO could not provide a satisfactory response to a simple question with regard to how Coal LSL accounts for moneys paid in and moneys paid then to employees. The question is: if bogus companies have been paid in the last seven years, how could this not be picked up? I'm informed that Coal LSL takes registered companies at their word. That has already led to Coal LSL admitting, under my questioning, serious errors in miners' accounts and entitlements. As Coal LSL has revealed in Senate estimates, it's not listened to the complaints of many coalminers who found discrepancies in their entitlements. What's more, once discrepancies have been raised with them, Coal LSL are slow or unresponsive.

I encourage coalminers to check that Coal LSL has correctly stated their entitlements so they're not ripped off. Simon Turner, an exploited Hunter Valley coalminer, is a case in point. After years of requests and complaints, Coal LSL took the word of his rogue employer, Chandler Macleod, over solid evidence and Simon's legitimate request for a fair go. Coal LSL is lax at informing employees of their options, with many casual miners not told that they're entitled to choose to not contribute to the scheme and to instead take their employer's cash contributions as cash in hand. Let's face it: at the moment, Coal LSL receives the employer contributions for many casual coalminers, who it never has to pay out if employees do not stay for the eight-year qualifying period. Where does this mountain of cash go, and how is it accounted for?

What I do know is that many casuals would be better off avoiding Coal LSL. There are many examples of Coal LSL failing in its obligations and failing to have appropriate checks and balances to verify that employees are getting their entitlements. For all we know, there may be systemic corruption on this government's watch. Have unaccountable union bosses and New South Wales Minerals Council executives om this Morrison government authority lined their pockets using bogus companies, at the expense of coalminers throughout Australia? We just do not know. Clearly, it is time for change.

We're talking about an authority that thousands of workers rely on to protect long-service-leave entitlements—an authority with a culture of bias towards pleasing the employer, not of protecting and being accountable for employees' entitlements. This is not the Coal LSL clerical staff's fault; it's the board and management who must stand up and be held to account. Governance does not exist, and the culture of Coal LSL is not solutions or customer focused. Clearly it is time for change. For too long Coal LSL has operated as a rogue government authority. Until I brought them before Senate estimates, they were never called upon to explain their actions. It was the suffering of exploited and abandoned workers like Simon Turner that put a spotlight on Coal LSL and its culture, which ignores abandoned workers. Clearly, it is time for change, and that change must be now.

Today, Stuart Bonds and I are strongly advocating for change in Coal LSL and a reconciliation of all accounts and entitlements, to ensure that workers and employers are not being ripped off. Stuart Bonds and I pledge to work for justice for workers hurting from the actions of unthinking, uncaring, unaccountable government authorities like Coal LSL, authorities under the joint control of shadowy union bosses and a Minerals Council acting for uncaring mining conglomerates—the same mining companies and union bosses that enable the exploitation of casual miners in the Hunter Valley. Clearly, it is time for a change. Coal LSL needs to be taken out of the hands of self-interested parties. Coal LSL management needs a broom put through it, a change, to build an open, honest, transparent, accountable culture to protect the entitlements of everyday Australian workers.

I implore all workers and everyday Australians, rural and city, to vote with your feet. Please go and tell your local union branch, member of parliament and senator that you expect workers' rights and entitlements to be protected. Tell Joel Fitzgibbon that the time for talk is over and that it's time for action. Tell Joel Fitzgibbon, the New South Wales Minerals Council and the CFMEU Hunter Valley union bosses that Coal LSL, like all government bodies, must demonstrate the highest standards of integrity, protect workers' interests and behave with common sense and transparency. Workers in Australia deserve integrity and support.