Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And you may smirk on the Labor side, but you approved it through Unions NSW. Case studies showed that workers were no worse off. This opposition hates hearing that—no worse off. The first lie was that no penalty rates were paid. But, in that agreement, penalty rates were paid; they just were not as high. It is impossible to get Labor to admit that. In return for that, the base wage was increased. That is how a case study is shown to a commissioner and ticked off by Fair Work Australia.

So what was the first thing that Labor did up there? You always say that the coalition never wins an industrial relations debate. Well, they managed to find the stupidest exponent of industrial relations on the Labor side—the local state member, who could not, for the life of him, calculate a penalty rate. This is a Labor union MP from the seat of Capalaba who, when it came to calculating a penalty rate on a Sunday, doubled the 25 per cent loaded amount and got the wrong rate. Not only did he make the mistake but he promulgated that figure all over social media. Ultimately, he was forced to retract and apologise. You know what? You may not be able to calculate a penalty rate but you will find a job as a Labor state MP.

Then we had the claim of staff being $5,000 worse off. Never substantiated. The only way you could possibly be worse off is if you were a hypothetical staff member who only worked on public holidays. But at the Capalaba Sports Club, all 38 of them are full-time casuals working four to five shifts a week, and they are no worse off. So what does the union do next? Home visits. They found the home addresses of staff at that club by either using the electoral roll of the state MP or raiding that club and taking pay slips. They knocked on the door of young teenagers and asked their parents if they would be interested in getting thousands of unpaid dollars back off that nasty club—all of which was fabricated. Thank God those parents turned them away; they professed to be union investigators. Lastly, we had a invited visit from the Fair Work Ombudsman, who was able to fully evaluate this in an independent fashion.

In the end, it all went away. The worker went and found a job somewhere else. The Fair Work Ombudsman completed the case. Then, fronting a tsunami of legal action in the federal court, the club decided to pull out. And that is the end of— (Time expired)

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