Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in opposition to the legislation before the House, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 [No. 2] and related legislation. I think the contribution of the previous speaker, the member for Barker, really sums up the debate, such as it is. There is only one element of his contribution with which I agree, and that is when he highlights the contrast between the positions of the major parties on this. He is right to do so, and that is the only respect in which his contribution has any correctness to it. He talks about the national interest. Well, that is something that Labor is concerned with. When it comes to workplace relations, it is the Labor Party that is concerned with the interests of Australians, particularly those Australians—the majority of Australians—who work for a living. Labor's agenda when it comes to the workplace is about putting people first, looking at the issues that governments should be concerned about in the workplace, particularly the growing and disturbing evidence of exploitation arising from insecure workplace arrangements and exploitative employment arrangements.

So, Labor has put forward a plan to strengthen and protect workers' rights at work through cracking down on illegal underpayment, with increased penalties for employers who systematically avoid paying their employees properly, and dealing with the issue of sham contracts—an issue that was identified way back in the Cole commission, which this government seems unconcerned about—and giving more power to the appropriate authorities to investigate these issues of underpayment while ensuring that temporary overseas workers are protected, not exploited. That is one agenda to deal with a real problem facing working Australians today.

On the other hand, all we have from government members in support of this stale legislation is rhetoric—rhetoric based in ideology. But it is more offensive than that, because, as we saw at the start of the contribution by the member for Barker, he took grave exception to the contribution by my colleague and friend the member for Newcastle—grave exception. Now, I was not there for that contribution, but I find it extraordinary that someone who could take that point at the beginning of his contribution to this debate could then base his argument for the introduction of this extraordinary suite of coercive powers—this extraordinary attack on fundamental rights and liberties—on such outrageous allegations, including those that really stretched the boundary of appropriate use of this parliament. They were just extraordinary allegations that were levelled, in place of evidence.

And I guess that is the nub of this debate. This piece of legislation is a triumph of ideology over evidence. So, today we see the reality of our new Prime Minister's new politics. It is writ very small, because it comes back to the ideology, the antiworker and anti-union ideology, that is writ into the DNA of members opposite. So we have the legislation before us—the reintroduction of flawed legislation, those flaws in fact being exacerbated with the passage of time. This legislation speaks volumes as to the paucity—

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