Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak about a couple of issues this evening. The first issue is about a bloke I've got to know really well who lives just outside Rockhampton, Chad Stokes. Chad is married with three children and has been working as a coalminer in Central Queensland coalmines for about seven years. In that whole length of time that Chad has been working as a coalminer, he's been classed by various different companies as a 'casual' or what's known locally as a 'permanent casual', in what has to be one of the silliest phrases I've ever heard in a workplace setting.

Over that period of seven years, Chad has worked most of the time, pretty consistently, working the same shifts, week after week, month after month, year after year. If you looked at how often Chad has worked and the kind of work that he does, you'd actually say that he's a permanent worker. He works basically the same shifts all the time. He wears the same uniform as the permanent workers that he works with. But, because of the loophole that currently exists in our workplace laws, which this government and big mining companies have exploited, Chad is nevertheless classed as a casual worker. That means in practice that, for seven years, Chad, along with other workers like him, has not had a single day's paid sick leave and has not had a single day's annual leave. After seven years working as a permanent, he would be starting to become entitled to take some long service leave, but he doesn't get that either. He doesn't get any redundancy pay every time his work finishes and he is laid off. He doesn't get any notice any time that he's laid off from work. And, of course, he doesn't have the job security that the permanent workers he works alongside get. What that means is that he and his family have a constant level of stress about how long he is going to remain in work, how long he is going to have a pay cheque, how long he is going to be able to keep feeding his family. Because workers like Chad are not treated as permanent workers and are treated instead as casuals, they can't get home loans or car loans. It leaves them in a very insecure, precarious place.

Unfortunately, Chad is not alone. I have met many coalminers across Central Queensland who are in exactly the same position. If we look across the country, there are thousands of coalminers now working as so-called permanent casuals. It's often said that it's okay, because people like Chad get compensated with a casual loading, and that's what covers the fact that they don't get these leave benefits and the job security that permanents get. But that's actually not true. A recent study by the McKell Institute established that many coalminers who are employed as so-called permanent casuals are in fact being paid 30 or 40 per cent less than the permanent workers they work alongside as well as missing out on the job security, leave benefits and other benefits that permanent workers get. So let's not have any of this notion that casuals are fairly compensated for the lack of security in their work. They have the double whammy of getting paid less than permanent workers and missing out on the benefits of permanent work.

It's such a betrayal of these workers by members of the LNP who sit in this chamber and in the House of Representatives, who are out there, day after day, saying how much they care about coalminers, dressing up like coalminers, paying visits to coalmines and telling workers there how much they care for them and how much they're working hard for them, but when they've come down to Canberra they've done nothing to fix this problem. And they have had ample time to do so, because it occurred to me that, just as Chad has worked as a so-called permanent casual coalminer for seven years, that's exactly the same length of time that the member for Capricornia, Michelle Landry, and the member for Dawson, George Christensen, and Senator Canavan and all of the other so-called supporters of coalminers have been sitting in the parliament and have failed to take any action to assist Chad and his fellow casual workmates. These LNP members, who say how much they like mining and say how much they like miners, have been here for every bit as long as these coalminers have been classed as casual workers, and those LNP members have done not a thing to fix the rampant casualisation and abuse of labour hire that we have seen across the mining industry in Central Queensland.

It's not just happening in the mining industry. That's, of course, a particularly blatant example of it. It's happening in so many different industries, whether it be construction, security, cleaning or manufacturing. In fact, one of my clearest memories from the last term of parliament was a particular day where I spent the day in Rockhampton speaking with coalminers who were suffering from this exploitation and this lengthy casualisation, and that evening I returned to Brisbane to do a forum with Commonwealth public servants, and you know what the biggest complaint they had was? It was the abuse of labour hire and casualisation by this very government in terms of how it engages its own staff. So this growth of insecure work is something that is spreading right throughout the economy and throughout many, many different industries, whether it be through casual work, contract work, labour hire, gig work. These days all sorts of categories of workers are missing out on the benefits of permanent work and not being fairly compensated for it.

It's because this has become such a big problem that last week the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, had good news for these workers, because we are clearly on the side of workers experiencing insecure employment. The best example of that was the policy that was released last week with a very simple title: Same Job, Same Pay. If you're working on a regular, systematic basis—working the same shifts week after week, month after month—like Chad and the other coalminers that I've met or the public servants that I've met or the construction workers that I've met who are going through this, if you are working on that sort of regular basis through labour hire, then you will need to be paid at least the same as the permanent workers that you work alongside. That's what a federal Labor government will do, because we're on your side. Of course there were a range of other announcements that were made by Mr Albanese in that speech as well which would also have great benefit to the vast number of people who are now experiencing insecure work, and I think that they will make a big difference to people's lives.

The other thing I wanted to touch on before my time runs out is the latest version of rorts that we have seen from a government that is truly riddled with rorts, and what I'm talking about is bushfire rorts. We've already seen from this government sports rorts. We've seen sleazy land deals. We've seen rorting of community safety funding. And now it appears that not even bushfire victims are safe from the rorting that is endemic within this government, because clear evidence has now emerged that the Morrison government is partnering with their coalition allies in the New South Wales government to shovel bushfire funds on a partisan basis towards coalition seats, or highly-marginal independent seats that are being targeted by the coalition, at the expense of Labour seats. I'll give you one example of that. Two of the worst affected areas after the Black Summer bushfires were the Blue Mountains outside Sydney and the Snowy Valleys region west of Canberra. Both experienced terrible bushfires with terrible damage and terrible losses. In fact, the National Bushfire Recovery Agency within this government paid $136,000 for a report prepared by long-term Liberal mate Peter Crone to inform decisions about which regions had suffered the most damage and which regions needed the most assistance in the form of economic recovery grants. Mr Crone's report established that both the Blue Mountains and the Snowy Valleys region experienced around a 48 per cent economic loss. On that basis, you would think that both of those regions would qualify for roughly the same amount of funding when it came to local economic recovery funds. But, no, that didn't happen. The Snowy Valleys region is based in the seat of Wagga Wagga, which was held for a long time by disgraced Liberal MP Daryl Maguire and is now marginally held by an Independent MP, but, of course, the coalition in NSW want to win it back. That seat got 12 grants, with a total value of $33 million. Just up the road is the Blue Mountains, in a seat held by the Labor party. How many grants did they get? Not one. Not a single dollar.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a scandal.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a scandal, Senator Farrell, and it's another example of the terrible behaviour and terrible rorting that is endemic in this government. How you vote should not determine the support you get from your government after a bushfire. You should just get what you need. (Time expired)