David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I had the pleasure of hosting a breakfast with academics, workers, students, the think tank Per Capita and the Australian Services Union to launch a new report and talk about the urgent need to start paying students for compulsory university placements. I recognise the work of fellow senators and members in the other place on this important issue over many years. We need to end placement poverty and we need to end it now. Expecting students to do hundreds of hours, and in some cases over a thousand hours, of unpaid placements—the equivalent of six months unpaid work—is completely unsustainable.

We heard this morning from Eli, a student at Newcastle University, about her and her friends having to skip meals. Students in this country shouldn't go hungry training to be the teachers, nurses, social workers and doctors we so desperately need. Adding to the financial pressures on students, often these placements are required to be undertaken full-time and away from the student's home base. This means additional housing and transport costs and lost income from paid work.

Thankfully, this was recognised in the recent Universities Accord. As you would know, the final report recommended that the Australian government work with higher education providers and employers to introduce payment for unpaid placements including government financial support for placements in the areas of nursing care and teaching. There's an opportunity to start this now. Minister Clare has sent some encouraging signals but on budget night six weeks from now I will be looking to see if this is backed up with immediate funding from the government to start rolling this out in the second half of the year. We talk about the importance of these workers and the importance of more of these workers in the future. Let's back it up with action and look after them.

Tradies in Australia deserve to be paid for work they've done. Too often and for far too long in this country we see big construction businesses bankroll their operations off the back of subcontractors. Subbies miss out on getting paid when these companies go bust. The rate of insolvencies in Australia continues to climb. In the second half of last year, we saw a 37 per cent increase in insolvencies, and more than a quarter of those were construction businesses. This trend has continued this year. It is particularly acute here in the ACT. Over the last few years, there's been a sharp increase in insolvencies. Two building companies have collapsed in the last week alone. On Tuesday, 10 subcontractors came to parliament to speak up. They're not the first to come here, but I'm hoping that we will begin to listen.

The government is making bold announcements about delivering 1.2 million homes over the next five years. Who's going to build those homes? Who is going to build them if we aren't actually looking after the tradies that build them? Fighting back tears, subbie Antony Lloyd said: 'I'm working very hard and it's taking a very big mental toll on my family and my mental health. It's disgusting. It's just something needs to be done. I call on all the politicians to take me seriously, because you will not have a construction industry, you will not have workers in the industry in years to come.'

It's time someone in this government stood up and took responsibility for this issue and did something about properly protecting subcontractors. They are not asking for special treatment; they are just asking to ensure that they are paid for work they have already done. We've seen the government criminalise wage theft. Where is the movement for tradies? Where is the same urgency, the same bill, that protects tradies' right to simply get paid for work they've already done? It's time that both major parties took this seriously and stood up for tradies across the country.