Alex Gallacher's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Defence Procurement | Questions without Notice | Senate debates
The acting Minister for Defence, Senator Payne, has previously argued against a local minimum content requirement in contracts for the future attack-class submarines, asserting it would create a...
The acting Minister for Defence, Senator Payne, has previously argued against a local minimum content requirement in contracts for the future attack-class submarines, asserting it would create a ceiling, not a floor, on local content. Is this why the acting minister refuses to disclose details of any Australian content requirement, as reported in today's Australian Financial Review?
The chief executive of the Australian Industry and Defence Network, Mr Brent Clark, has said that the agreement 'will go to the very heart of how Australian industry is to be brought into the...
The chief executive of the Australian Industry and Defence Network, Mr Brent Clark, has said that the agreement 'will go to the very heart of how Australian industry is to be brought into the supply chain for the submarine' and that it needs to be 'made public to ensure transparency'. Is Mr Clark wrong?
My question is to the acting Minister for Defence, Senator Payne. Defence minister Linda Reynolds promised last year to secure a contracted requirement of 60 per cent minimum local content for...
My question is to the acting Minister for Defence, Senator Payne. Defence minister Linda Reynolds promised last year to secure a contracted requirement of 60 per cent minimum local content for the Future Submarines program. Can the acting Minister for Defence confirm that this contractual agreement has still not been finalised, and when will it be finalised?
Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
I rise to speak against the passing of the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021. There was a time when the conservative side of the chamber was much...
I rise to speak against the passing of the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021. There was a time when the conservative side of the chamber was much more forthright and open. The Hon. Peter Reith gave a speech at the Royal Perth Yacht Club where he said: 'I know whose side I'm on. I'm on the side of business—small businesses, medium sized businesses and big businesses, and we will do what's necessary for those businesses.' I think that's what's missing in this debate. I listened to the contributions from Senator Bragg and others talking almost as if they were the workers' friends. They are far from the workers' friends. I want to put some economic data on the record before I hop into a bit of criticism of the other side. The share of national income going to Australian workers has been steadily declining since the 1970s, with the profit share increasing. But the labour share has suddenly fallen below 50 per cent for the first time since 1959. Obviously the trend is exacerbated by the COVID-19 recession. On Thursday, the Bureau of Statistics released its June quarter gross domestic product data, and the data showed that economic activity across April, May and June shrank by seven per cent, the biggest quarterly contraction in 60 years. But the ABS noted something else. It said that company profits jumped a massive 14.9 per cent in this quarter, while the total wages and salaries bill for workers—characterised as compensation for workers—fell by a record 2.5 per cent. That meant that the labour share of income has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time in decades, while profits have hit record levels. Why would wages and salaries decline when the government has been providing billions of dollars for JobKeeper payments? Mr Pickering, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab and a former Reserve Bank official, told the ABC the emergency subsidies to businesses had helped: What's basically happened is there's been a range of sectors that have reported quite a significant increase in profits, largely due to subsidies received from the government — JobKeeper. At the same time, we've had a significant decline in employment, which is putting downward pressure on compensation of employees [wages and salaries]. However, he said, the large shift in the income share between labour and profit in the June quarter should only be temporary: It should unwind over the coming quarters. Saul Eslake, a very familiar name in economic circles and now a Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Tasmania, said the noticeable shift in income share in the June quarter was largely a 'statistical artefact'. He said: It's because a whole lot of people stopped working and had their income replaced by government benefits, so profits represented a bigger share of what was left. From one perspective, you could say JobKeeper propped up profits and in a way they did, because if it hadn't have been for JobKeeper, profits probably would have been a lot lower. But it's basically showing that a whole lot of employees, and hence their wage payments, were removed from the equation. Mr Eslake said there was an important phenomenon to consider when thinking about this issue. He said that we had to keep in mind what had happened to low-paid workers this year. He said that the data shows average non-farm compensation per employee actually increased by 3.3 per cent in the June quarter and by five per cent from a year earlier. That was the fastest year-on-year growth in that measurement since March 2012. Mr Eslake said: Now, how do you explain the total wage share going down [by 2.5 per cent] and the average non-farm compensation per employee going up? The answer is: it was disproportionately low-income and low-paid workers who've lost their jobs this year. So, what's left tend to be higher-paid people, and even though higher-paid people have taken pay cuts themselves, the impact on that has been more than outweighed by the culling of workers at the bottom end of the scale, so the average income goes up, even when the overall income goes down. The punchline, when we get to it, is fairly straightforward: … over the last six years in Australia especially, and over the last 20 years in other countries, and over the last 40 years in the United States, there has been a steady shift in the distribution of income from labour to capital. Australia was sheltered from that for a while by the mining boom, but not anymore. If we have a predicament like that, where labour's share of national income has consistently been declining for a number of years and has now fallen below 50 per cent, disproportionately shareholders and companies are taking the lion's share of the national income. So you end up with low inflation, clearly not a bad thing, but stagnating wage growth. In an environment where people can't get a pay rise at the moment, where people can't get an increase in hours at the moment, where some of them can't get jobs at the moment, we have an omnibus bill designed to help them. Well, I think I've been around industrial relations long enough to know that the other side of the chamber has never put up a bill that's designed to help workers get a pay rise. If they were honest, they would say that. There's never been a case where that side of the chamber has put forward any sort of legislation which is designed to get people a greater share for their labour. It just doesn't happen, and Peter Reith was honest enough to say that. That honesty is lacking on that side of the chamber now, because people are saying, 'Look, we're helping you.' They're not helping people into higher, more secure, better paid employment. They're not doing that at all. They're making it easier for employers to spread the meagre amount of money they want to spend on labour across a greater number of people. We will end up exactly like the United States, where, if you're working in a bar or restaurant and you don't get a tip, you basically can't pay your rent; you can't afford your outgoings. I don't think those on the other side of the chamber are innovative enough or smart enough to come up with a new scheme, with a new paradigm; they're basically taking an old well-trodden path in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in other parts of the world, bringing it to Australia and making Australia a poorer place for working people. If they were honest, they would say that their job is to look after capital, 'and you lot look after labour'. But what's happened in looking after labour is they had 12 years of the Howard government, with probably another seven years of this government, which makes it extremely difficult for organised labour to actually operate. In the meantime, as Senator O'Neill alluded to, they're actually ripping off Australia. There are submissions to the wage theft inquiry which say that the amount of forgone taxation revenue from wage theft would probably be approaching a $9 billion hit to the national economy. The amount of forgone contributions tax on super is also quite a large figure. The Taxation Office is on record saying what it is. Coincidentally, the Taxation Office is in charge of collecting it. They know how much has been forgone, but they don't take any steps to collect it. If this government and the other side of the chamber had half the acumen they profess to possess, they would stick on another thousand tax collectors. I think the figures are quite simple: for every dollar you spend on a tax collector, the return to the government is $5 to $6, so another thousand people in the taxation department chasing people who are not paying superannuation and therefore not paying contributions tax would be beneficial. If we had another group of people looking at those who systematically underpay wages, we would have more taxation revenue. We're not talking about mum and dad with two trucks or mum and dad with a small landscaping business; we're talking about huge corporations, like Woolworths owning up to $300 million worth of underpayment. How much was forgone in the taxation area? How much was forgone in the superannuation area? But, no, the coalition came up with the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021, which I think basically will mean: if you haven't got a job, you can probably get one, but it's not going to be as well paid as the one you lost, and, by the way, we'll determine whether you're actually going to get overtime or not based on who's willing to work. If you're starving or you've got bills to pay and you want overtime, you won't get it, but, if someone wants to continue on ordinary pay, they will get it. These are disgraceful things: eight-year agreements. Who's going to know what is happening in terms of the CPI and the like in eight years time? By the way, you won't get a chance to negotiate that because, if it's a $250 million investment, that will be done before you get there. By the time you get there, it will be: 'Great news! We have an eight-year agreement here.' If you ask what the wage rise is, they'll say, 'Stuff all,' or you might get CPI or half a per cent. Anyway, that'll be nothing to do with you; that will already be sorted out. How do you change it? You can't. This is a prescription for a dire situation. We should be trying to recover for people proper, full-time, secure work that's reasonably paid, not creating another underclass of people in Australia who will never see permanent employment. There are many young people at the moment who have never had the luxury of a permanent job. They have never had it. They can get 16, 17, 22 or 25 hours but they can't get a permanent job. In other areas of quite reasonable economic activity, you have an inordinate number of casuals or labour hire people. Once again, those people don't see a permanent opportunity coming forward. But the coalition's putting up the smokescreen, in my view, that this legislation is coming along to help reinvigorate the economy. If the national labour income share continues to decline, we'll end up exactly like the United States, where you have a lot of people who, since the seventies, haven't seen their share of the wealth of their great country increase, which hasn't been good for the economy. America's deficit, you can't count the zeroes on the end of it. Australia's different. I suppose because we are different and capital is no different—capital is international—we're attracting attention. But I wish that those on the other side would at least come to the argument with clean hands. The ACTU and other parties sat down with the Hon. Christian Porter and the Hon. Josh Frydenberg and attempted to resolve areas of concern. But, in my view, the whole lot should be just opposed absolutely. There are no redeeming features in here which will redress what is a national shame—that workers who carry this country, such as cleaners, garbagemen and all of the people who do all of those jobs we take for granted, are not getting a fair share of the national income. This bill will make sure that that never happens. It will never happen. They will be consigned to insecure work, low pay and no hope for the foreseeable future. Unless the electorate changes and votes in a different government, there will be no respite. Actually, this is a culmination of decades of attacks on working people. We are now starting to see, in economic measuring terms, the fact that the labour share of income is dropping below 50 per cent of national income. I would prefer an economy where we were growing through productivity and economic activity, where workers were getting an increasing share of the national income, because workers spend their money. Workers do not put it in a tin and dig a hole in the garden or send it to the Cayman Islands and seek to avoid tax. There's no seeking to avoid tax if you're a wages and salary earner. You earn your money, tax goes to the appropriate place, super goes to the appropriate place and you are contributing fully to the economy. If we paid that sector correctly and gave them more freedom to bargain and the ability to increase their wages and contribute economically, they would educate their families and contribute all around in the community, and Australia would be a much better place. I don't want to see the low-wage inequality that exists in the United States.
March 4 Justice, Sexual Harassment, Attorney-General | Matters of Urgency | Senate debates
I listened with great interest to the contributions from Senator Payne and Senator Ruston. What was going through my mind was that they're in a fairly invidious position. They both have a level...
I listened with great interest to the contributions from Senator Payne and Senator Ruston. What was going through my mind was that they're in a fairly invidious position. They both have a level of professionalism and competency, demonstrated over a number of years in this parliament. The first part of this urgency motion is: The urgent need for the Morrison Government to respect the thousands of Australians who marched in the Women's March 4 Justice yesterday— I think that's where the Morrison government has really let itself down. The Prime Minister's responses following this procession of very ugly revelations coming to light have been, in my view, quite bizarre. If I had to go back and ask my wife about a set of circumstances I'd heard about in my workplace, I'd probably end up with a thick ear. It is quite bizarre that he could come out and say publicly, 'I asked Jen, and she said, "What about our daughters?"' That is a very bizarre statement. It doesn't get much better. The Minister for Defence had an extremely unfortunate series of explanations, equivocations and denials. Ultimately, her own office said, 'Enough is enough,' and started leaking on her. The 'lying cow' stuff is unforgivable. It is unforgivable that you run an office where that is able to happen, but it is doubly unforgivable that you can't handle it and you blame the victim. There are many good offices in this place. There are many places where people are treated with respect, where there are proper rules and where harassment in any way, shape or form is not permitted. To have the minister's office, where this person has been employed, exploit situations with vulnerable workers is a failure of leadership. It is a failure of leadership in that ministerial office. The Prime Minister's failure to recognise it is also quite unfathomable. He has the great honour of leading this great nation. Over the years many prime ministers have been capable of it. John Howard stood in front of people and said, 'You're going to lose your guns,' because he knew it was right. Here we have a Prime Minister who says: 'The rule of law will take care of all of this. By the bye, some other thing is going to happen, and I'm not going to investigate it.' For the general public, this is very bizarre behaviour from the person they elected to lead them, to lead the nation and to show empathy and courage when it's required. I don't think the Prime Minister has shown any empathy. He certainly hasn't shown any courage. It might have been traumatic for him to go out on the steps of parliament for the March 4 Justice. People may have heckled him. That doesn't matter. He's the Prime Minister. It's his job to lead from the front with empathy and with courage, to state the programs he has put in place and to defend his government's position. You don't say, 'You can have a private meeting with me and I'll get you a cup of earl grey tea and we'll put it all to bed,' because it's not going to bed. This parliament is going to change. On any side of the chamber, plenty of offices with really good high standards exist. Those who transgressed should be rooted out and dispatched from this place. If you cannot provide a safe working environment for your staff, you shouldn't be here. If you need training on that, I don't know how the hell you got here. The first bit of training I had on equal opportunity and sexual harassment was at a course in 1988. This is not new stuff. You know that, if you have vulnerable employees, you need to be watchful and give guidance. You need to make sure that they're looked after. There has been a complete failure in the Minister for Defence's area to look after her workers. That is unfathomable to me. I really do think that the parliament will change for the better. The sooner it happens the better.
National Consumer Credit Protection Amendment (Small Amount Credit Contract and Consumer Lease Reforms) Bill 2019 (No. 2); Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
I listened with great interest to my colleague Senator Brockman's comments. But, fundamentally, this issue is quite distinct from mere politics. I just want to put a couple of pieces of evidence...
I listened with great interest to my colleague Senator Brockman's comments. But, fundamentally, this issue is quite distinct from mere politics. I just want to put a couple of pieces of evidence on the record before I get into more substantive issues. The Consumer Action Law Centre noted the lure of these products: I think people will often act in the most simple, convenient way to deal with the hardship in front of them ... when someone is faced with a stressful situation, when they're experiencing some form of desperation, they'll be attracted to what seems to be the easy option. I think that that would be generally accepted as a proposition. When people face a calamity, an illness, the loss of a job or the inability to put milk in the fridge because the fridge is blown up, I think people will look for a solution immediately. We do live in a society where you can't not have a TV, fridge and the like. I think that's quite an instructive piece of evidence. It's also important to go back to Commissioner Kenneth Hayne's final report, where he said: My conclusions about issues relating to the NCCP Act can be summed up as "apply the law as it stands". Commissioner Hayne made a clear recommendation relating to the NCCP Act: The NCCP Act should not be amended to alter the obligation to assess unsuitability. These are very clear pieces of evidence that point us in the right direction. When people get into trouble, they're going to look for the solution, and the solution is a loan. They're not going to read the fine print; they're not going to examine the punitive interest rates; they're going to deal with the immediacy of their situation. I think it is incumbent on the government to take action. I think Senator Brockman's contribution about the limitations on how much a Centrelink recipient can borrow was very good, and those should be in place. My experience in that area, dealing with a friend of mine, is that, once they get to that stage where they're getting a deduction from Centrelink, they quite often have access to a no-interest loan run by one of the various not-for-profits, which are really good. He has told me ad infinitum that, once people have been through the mill a couple of times and they get to the stage where they have to make decisions about how they afford the normal necessities of life, they become very skilled at it. But it's an inordinate journey to there. Quite often they're under tremendous stress and strain through punitive interest rates and penalties. I think the royal commission did point to a period where there was substantial redress for people who were given money when it was clearly unsuitable for them and they couldn't repay it. The situation there hasn't really improved much. I don't think that weakening the standards is simply going to improve the lot of people who are very vulnerable to predatory loans. I saw an ad on the TV the other day which said: 'Don't worry about payday. Payday could be today.' I don't know what that's about. Do you hand over your income to a third party and you can just withdraw it early? How does that help you? Payday is Thursday, and you can take your money out on Monday? You're still broke by Saturday. There are all sorts of things going on in this space which I think we should be cautious about. If we look at the end of JobKeeper—a great program that can't go on forever—it may well be that we're going to see more people moving to JobSeeker, which, although it has had a slight increase, is still a very, very meagre amount. People will borrow when faced with a crisis in their life. I'm not sure that this is the way to go forward with it. The government has been failing to act since 2017, delivering more business to payday lenders and to consumer lease providers, at the expense of ordinary Australians. I don't know what we do in terms of people having access to credit when they desperately need it, other than that we should go and fund the no-interest loan providers to the maximum we possibly can, because there is a proven track record there of people coming to terms with their financial budget, making plans which work and going on to make smart, commercial decisions. It has been explained to me how they work. A no-interest loans adviser will sit down with the consumer, go through their budget and say: 'Here is the amount that you can spend'—it might be $1,300—'That's the amount that you would qualify for under a no-interest loan. We want you to go out into the consumer world and get a deal. Get three deals, but don't make any commitments until you come back to us, and we'll see how you went.' And people do. They're very proud to go out and get three quotes. What normally happens is that the adviser will say: 'Fine. You've done good work here. This is how the world actually works. But what I want you to do now is go and see this provider, because I'm pretty sure he can beat the three loans you've got.' The lesson learned is: get quotes. Check the market, see what you've been offered and count the cost of the loan. The no-interest loan situation with the Good Guys is a great deal, and invariably they match whatever is available and undercut what's in the marketplace. The consumer—and it's usually a woman, a single mother, who for whatever reason is in a precarious circumstance—will learn through that process to take power and take control of her own budgeting, and grows exponentially during this process. This is what people tell me. So, rather than making it easy for payday lenders to prey on people, we as a national parliament, and the government particularly, should be helping to increase financial literacy in this sector, where perhaps we don't need so much regulation or legislation. Clearly at the moment it's desperation versus opportunity, desperation versus the need for that fridge or computer and the need to keep the household going. In that environment, people are not making great decisions. I know there are two sides to the story. If the credit provider discloses the terms of the credit and someone takes it, it's not a great decision by the consumer, but often it's driven by desperation. We do know that those who have part-time employment, those who are on the minimum wage and those who are on JobSeeker, disability payments and the like are not in a position to make too many discretionary decisions about expenditure. It's virtually a case of: 'It's happened. I need to fix it. Let's go and do it.' Some of the things that are currently at odds with what we would call the norm is that payday lenders can charge interest rates equivalent to more than 200 per cent per annum, and there is no cap at all on the costs that can be charged by these lease providers. Lenders continue to sign people up to loans and leases with unaffordable repayments, which causes people to wind up in a debt spiral and leaves struggling families in debt or poverty. Surely the federal government is not in favour of that? Surely the federal government is not in favour of a predatory system where people end up entrenched in debt and poverty? This bill directly addresses these challenges. It provides for a cap on the total repayments that can be made under a consumer lease. There's better regulation of repayment and of repayment intervals, removal of fees for loans that have been fully paid, prohibition of door-to-door selling, anti-avoidance protections and stronger penalties for wrongdoing. And regarding penalties for wrongdoing, right across the whole financial area I don't see too many penalties being applied. The royal commission pointed to some success, but this bill removes some of that protection. I know Senator Brockman referred to ACFA, but I don't see that there's any particular trail of evidence that they've been the good cop on the beat. I don't see the evidence of that. All we are seeing is evidence of perhaps a lack of protection for people, and this bill would make it better for consumers. The 2019-20 summer bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic have increased financial vulnerability and rendered more Australians vulnerable to the promises of small-amount credit contracts and consumer leases. Also, young people are increasingly concerned about their financial security and are more likely to be taking on debt as a means of relieving immediate financial stress. Consumer protections are needed more than ever. I think that's a very important point. Consumer protections are needed now more than ever, as we move into the uncertainty of the post pandemic—if we get vaccinated, if we can start moving around this country again, if people get back to reasonable amounts of employment, if 100,000 people don't drop onto the Centrelink/JobSeeker market. We need to be cautious. This bill should be supported because it's not doing anything particularly untoward. We know that in certain areas the economy is actually overheating. We know that the housing sector has blown out of the water. It is exponentially overheating. There will be other bills that will come before the parliament with discretionary limitations for the purposes of driving the economy. I'm not sure how we can drive the economy from this point. These are the most vulnerable consumers in the economy. They are those who are going to face stress and immediate problems which are going to require some borrowed money. I'm not sure that we can clearly see that this is going to drive the economy forward. It may well just drive another bubble along the way, which is a bubble of disaster, despair, poverty and debt. Low-income families are disproportionately going to find themselves in an awkward predicament in the not-too-distant future if the economy doesn't improve and they don't have full employment and slip onto JobSeeker. If they have one of these payday loans, with up to 200 per cent interest and predatory fees, it's going to be tough. They're only one dose of COVID away from disaster. If their income dries up altogether, if they're casual and get sick or if there's an illness or accident in the family, they will wind up with a predatory debt that will push them further down at a time of their most vulnerability. I support Senator McAllister's efforts here to bring fairness and equity back into this sector and keep prudent regulation in place that would limit the ability of people to prey on the most vulnerable section of our community. I finish up by saying that, if the government wanted to do something smart, it would put a whole lot more money into interest-free loans and not-for-profit groups that administer those schemes so very well across this country, because they improve the financial literacy of the recipients exponentially and will go some way to relieving the need for any of this legislation.
Members of Parliament: Staff | Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers | Senate debates
I rise to take note of answers to questions, and in particular Senator Wong's question to Senator Reynolds. But, before I go to that matter, I'd just like to, in a sense, congratulate Senator...
I rise to take note of answers to questions, and in particular Senator Wong's question to Senator Reynolds. But, before I go to that matter, I'd just like to, in a sense, congratulate Senator Abetz on his contribution. But there was one great big glaring hole in all of that contribution. On the night that this happened, no-one rang the police. I will shake my head forever as to why a security guard, a ministerial adviser, a DPS staffer and Senator Reynolds never thought to ring the police about what was clearly a serious crime that had been committed in this parliament. The business that I want to refer to at the moment is Senator Reynolds' nonanswer, once again falling on a track record of nonanswers, to the naval shipbuilding inquiry in the economics committee. She did it again today. When asked, 'Why have you not made a decision, which you said you'd make in 2019?' She referred to our term of government and her government's investment in shipbuilding, submarines and the like. Where is the difficulty with this minister coming to grips with a decision which she had foreshadowed? Why is there such an ongoing black cloud over South Australia as to where this is? Why are there 750 workers wondering whether or not they've got a job in an area where we should be looking at confirming their position, recruiting more boilermakers, recruiting more engineers and recruiting more shipbuilding workers? There appears to be a continual hiatus in that office, a continual procrastination, a continual lack of decision-making. If you were to look at the debacle that has played itself out in the parliament for the last week or so, there clearly doesn't appear to be any strong ministerial leadership or any strong capability within the office. It seems to meander along from one disaster to the next. When we in the naval shipbuilding inquiry and the like try to seek information about what capability plans are available, what expenditure is happening, we get stonewalled. We literally get told 'commercial in confidence', 'can't see it', 'can't do it'. It's quite extraordinary. I well remember asking questions of David Johnston, the former Senator from Western Australia, who was the Minister for Defence, and he'd give you a response. You may not like the response. As a matter of fact, one famous day in this chamber he gave you a response that no-one would like. About South Australian workers, he said, 'I wouldn't trust ASC to build a canoe'. Shortly after that he changed his career direction and went on to bigger and better things than Minister for Defence. He was never short of expertise and intelligent answers, but this minister appears to be bereft of expertise in her office and refuses to answer almost everything. There is literally almost not a question which we can craft that this minister will not find a way of avoiding. We on this side are not playing trumps here. Defence is not an overtly political area. Once decisions about where things are made, where things are produced or where money is spent are made, people like to just get on and examine progress. Dare I say this: a government will never fall in Australia because Defence has overspent; it's almost inclined to overspend on everything it does. It often has three or four projects of concern requiring the attention of the Treasurer, the finance minister and the defence minister to try and get them back on track. So we have a minister who just blatantly refuses to provide information to properly constituted committees of the Senate and then, in question time, won't provide answers she knows to questions.
Defence Procurement; Order for the Production of Documents | Documents | Senate debates
I too rise to take note of the response of Senator Reynolds. I do endorse the comments made by Senator Birmingham. I think he has been a circuit breaker in what's been an extremely unusual and...
I too rise to take note of the response of Senator Reynolds. I do endorse the comments made by Senator Birmingham. I think he has been a circuit breaker in what's been an extremely unusual and vexed inquiry. I've done a couple of inquiries since I've been here. As I languished on the backbench, I learnt all about Senate standing order procedures and inquiries, but I've never run into this level of intransigence. I honestly have no political perspective in the pursuit of this inquiry. To me, it looks straight up and down: scrutinise expenditure, plans and progress in an extremely important area of defence policy. I had the opportunity of opening up a hearing quite recently, and I said to the secretary of Defence: I will start for a few moments. I'm not looking at this from any particular perspective, other than that the Senate gave this committee a reference. You would be familiar with the terms of that reference. Amongst the terms of reference is the ongoing examination of contracts and scrutiny of expenditure. The department's performance, when we have requested information, has been nothing short of abysmal. You have redacted publicly available information and sent it to us. It's almost like you have a giant forefinger up to the operation of this committee. It has now been to the Senate to get orders. I accept that you have a case on your commercial confidentiality position and all the rest of it, but, in the ordinary course of this committee's activity, I, as the chair, personally feel—and I'm sure there are other members of the committee who feel the same way—that Defence has been absolutely obtuse, arrogant, dismissive and contemptuous of the work of a Senate committee duly given a reference by the Senate. It was a pretty strong opening line to a departmental secretary, but I don't resile from it, because the people who are resourcing the Senate committee, the good people of the secretariat, were becoming absolutely flabbergasted at the information that was given to us. The way it was presented to us was almost something that had never been seen before—and I have done a little bit of work with Defence. I chaired the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, and we went through some exceedingly contentious private issues and dealt with an enormous amount of stuff that may have needed to be visible in camera. It appears, though, that all of those sorts of protocols and procedures have been forgotten by Defence. In the Veterans' Affairs area we had a whole stack of in camera documents made available to senators. When I say 'senators', I don't mean just to voting senators, as they've tried to prescribe here. Over a period of time you'd sign in, you'd be able to access the information—you couldn't copy it or take it away but you could view it—form your opinion and come back and make your contribution. I well remember Senator Fawcett being exceedingly diligent in that area. Personally, I have only to read one tale of distress; I don't need to read a hundred. But there were other senators—Senator Lambie, Senator Fawcett—who went in camera and went through the whole lot. This is the really interesting thing: the end result was that we produced a report which had 26 recommendations, and the government accepted every one of them. The Department of Veterans' Affairs actually put money behind some of the initiatives that were suggested. So good work can come out of difficult areas. But not providing information to people is absolutely not conducive to a great outcome. Senator Reynolds has left the chamber, and basically that's why I need to put on the record that she had written to me setting out a pathway forward, and that I had written back to her and she was responding to that. The problem with Senator Birmingham's and Senator Reynolds's responses basically is that this has twice been the subject of a Senate order for the production of documents. Senator Patrick is quite entitled to look for a Privileges outcome here. I foreshadowed that this type of activity could occur every sitting day until we got resolution. I foreshadowed it to the Department of Defence and clearly, obviously, as it was a public hearing, to the minister. What the minister sought to do was to say: 'Senators will be able to view the documents at a secure location in Canberra. This will be available to voting members of the committee only.' Clearly, that condition is a breach of the standing orders. All members of the Senate are participating members of all committees and therefore can go and participate in all inquiries. To say it's available to voting members only is wrong; it's against standing orders. That has been clearly pointed out. This request contravenes standing order 25(7)(c), which states: Participating members may participate in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committees, and have all the rights of members of committees, but may not vote on any questions before the committees. So they can get all the information; they just can't vote on the outcome of it. We're not quite as close as Senator Birmingham alleges, but I do say that he has intervened to good measure a couple of times. The nut of it all is this: I said to our committee secretary, 'Can you reach out to the Department of Defence and say: "We're not unique. This is a reference. You can see the terms of reference. These are requests. You know the standing orders. Can we get somewhere closer? Is there an area where we can start seeing a regular flow of information to allow the committee to do its work?"' You've got to allow the committee to do its work. If you need to argue commercial-in-confidence, you'll either win or lose that, and you're losing it. Senator Patrick has come to the committee and put on the table freedom-of-information outcomes which clearly say that Defence was wrong in hiding the stuff from the committee. There are no ifs and buts about it. Some of the freedom-of-information stuff that he's got actually state that they should be made available to the committee. So we've been passing the parcel in a very difficult area. I don't know whether this intransigence and reluctance to cooperate with the Senate committee is in the ministerial office or whether it's in Defence. I fired a shot over Secretary Moriarty's bow and said: 'I reckon you're giving us a giant forefinger. Tell us why you're not, and improve your performance.' This doesn't stop in the references committee; all it does is transfer it to estimates, and then you'll have another whole heap of departmental officers working away on questions on notice and the like. Why can't we have what the Constitution says? There's a parliament and there's an executive, and this Senate gave us the job of scrutinising performance capability and money. Where's the big issue here? Every time they raise an issue, Senator Patrick trumps them with this: 'By the way, I got that under freedom of information, and it says it shouldn't have been classified in the first place.' I won't take up any more of the Senate's time, but I think it's important that we allow our Senate committees to do what they do best: scrutinise expenditure. The Audit Office will come down eventually and say, 'God Almighty, what happened here?' but in the meantime we might be able to put someone on the pathway to good outcomes. Question agreed to.
Employment | Questions without Notice | Senate debates
We look forward to the evidence being forthcoming to the chamber. Can the minister guarantee that no worker has lost or will lose their job as a result of the government's JobMaker hiring credit...
We look forward to the evidence being forthcoming to the chamber. Can the minister guarantee that no worker has lost or will lose their job as a result of the government's JobMaker hiring credit scheme?
How many new jobs have so far been created as a part of the government's JobMaker Hiring Credit scheme?
In a response to an earlier question from Senator Gallagher, Senator Birmingham said that the evidence was in.
My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. To date, how many employers have registered to claim payments under the JobMaker Hiring Credit scheme? And how...
My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. To date, how many employers have registered to claim payments under the JobMaker Hiring Credit scheme? And how many employers have received payments to date?
Australia Post; Consideration | Documents | Senate debates
I just want to go through a little bit of detail to start with. It was clearly an exceptional year for Australia Post. It was an exceptional year in terms of income, and profit before tax was...
I just want to go through a little bit of detail to start with. It was clearly an exceptional year for Australia Post. It was an exceptional year in terms of income, and profit before tax was some $53.6 million—so a very, very substantial increase in remuneration. It's worth noting that the executives and the board are also very respectably remunerated. I think you'll find that the chair gets $189,000. The deputy chair gets $105,000. Non-executive directors get $94,990. The audit and risk committee chair gets $21,000. An audit and risk committee member gets $11,000. The people and sustainability chair gets $18,000. The people and sustainability committee members get $9,000. If you've ever been on a board, you know that the subcommittees are generally occupied by the main board, so those amounts of around $20,000 are added to perhaps the deputy chair's or the chair's income. So these people are very respectably remunerated. If you look at the executive, the salaries are right up there. I don't want to talk about people's names, but, if you look at the CEO, it's a $1.4 million salary. Other executives get $690,000, $720,000, $600,000, $600,000, $700,000 or $800,000. There are about 13 senior executives, and they shared in about $8 million worth of bonuses. I don't begrudge anybody who's doing a very good job getting a very respectable salary, and if the dividends are paid to the taxpayer, well, it all looks good. But when I go to talk to people about Australia Post, they don't really care what the CEO is getting, but they do care when their letters turn up in someone else's letterbox. We've got delivery speeds for a letter in the same state up to five business days. Clearly, the challenge is to get it there as quick as you can. Metro to metro is up to five business days. Metro to country is up to six business days. Country to country is up to seven business days. Clearly, all of the performance is being driven off parcel freight. What we relied on Australia Post for—and, increasingly, many more of us don't rely on it. I do the same thing: 'Email me a bill, and I'll direct debit my account.' No-one posts me a bill anymore. But there are still large sections of the community relying on the post. There are probably very few people, apart from my wife, who actually sit down and write a letter, but there are people who are still relying on 'letter in, letter out' for their affairs, and it's taking up to five business days. I had a problem, recently, where someone said, 'You've got a final notice.' I said, 'I didn't even get the first notice.' They said: 'You've got a final notice here. It's going to cost an extra hundred bucks.' I said: 'Well, it would have been handy if you'd given me the first notice. I would have paid it!' Anyway, it's all down to Australia Post, apparently. They can't get a letter in on time. I just want to finish on one point. Senator Abetz was a tad political with the ABC. I don't begrudge people in Australia Post getting a bonus if it was a Cartier watch that was approved by the board and the CEO was well within her entitlements. I thought the behaviour by the Prime Minister was appalling. And the outcry from all of the Australia Post outlets across the country about her being pushed aside was quite significant. I thought it was just another example of the Prime Minister shooting from the lip, clearly taking a pub test rather than a commonsense test. I'm sure that the CEO is well ensconced with a competitor of Australia Post now and is probably tearing strips of Australia Post's business. In hindsight, it may not have been a very smart decision. But to punt the CEO in the way that the Prime Minister did, I thought, was quite sad and not becoming of the conduct we would expect from the Honourable Scott Morrison. I seek leave to continue my remarks. Leave granted; debate adjourned.
Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019, Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019; Second Reading | Bills | Senate debates
I too would like to make a contribution on the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019. Knowing absolutely zero about this...
I too would like to make a contribution on the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019. Knowing absolutely zero about this bill and realising that I had to make a contribution on it, I've read as much information as I could get my hands on and listened to as many contributions as possible today. As always, when I don't really know what's going on, I go to the ever reliable people at the Parliamentary Library and ask for a Bills Digest. And, as always, they come good. In 'The Bills Digest at a glance'—I think there's a little bit of irony there, because, at a glance, the Bills Digest is 37 pages long, so you need more than a passing glance to get across the issues that are canvassed in the Parliamentary Library's Bills Digest. Basically, I'm instructed: The Bills were first introduced in 2018 and lapsed at the end of the 45th Parliament on 1 July 2019. The 2019 FCFC Bill includes the following changes from the 2018 version: • Rather than both Divisions sharing the same original jurisdiction, there will be a single point of entry to the Court, with all matters initially filed in the FCFC (Division 2) and the ability to transfer cases between Divisions • The FCFC (Division 1), rather than the Federal Court of Australia, will be responsible for hearing family law and child support appeals • The criteria for judicial appointments has been amended to require FCFC (Division 2) Judges to have the appropriate knowledge, skills, experience and aptitude to deal with the kinds of matters that might be expected to come before them, including family violence in the case of family law matters. An express reference to family violence has also been added to the criteria for appointment of FCFC (Division 1) Judges and • Regulations may (but are not required to) prescribe a minimum number of FCFC (Division 1) Judges—the Government has stated this number is intended to be 25. So, that's the short history of the bill, and there has been a Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry, reported on 20 November 2020. That's a legislation committee, so a government controlled committee. And: The committee recommended the Bill be passed. Australian Labor Party (Labor) Senators and the Australian Greens (Greens) issued separate dissenting reports… I think this is something that Senator Sterle has touched on, that might be just set aside as political opponents not agreeing, but the stakeholder comments referred to in the Bills Digest are quite instructive as well: The majority of submitters to the Senate Inquiry argued that greater resourcing, rather than structural change, was required to address the issues facing the family law system. They called on the government to respond to the recommendation of the Australian Law Reform Commission when it produced Family law for the future. So it was argy-bargy, and the government went ahead with its recommendation that the bill be passed. The Australian Greens and the Labor Party went the other way. But it's instructive that the majority of submissions were against the bill. We really do get to a system here, and I think it's quite instructive to skip to the Productivity Commission's evidence in this matter. The Productivity Commission's Report on government services2020 has highlighted an increase in the backlog of cases in the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court—that is, cases in the courts for over 12 months. It has identified a 34 per cent increase in the Family Court's backlog between 2012-13 and 2018-19, and a 63 per cent increase across the Federal Circuit Court. In respect of the funding and judicial appointments across the same period, the NSW Bar Association provides the following summary: … there had been an increase of just 2.73 percent, or $6.724 million, in the operating appropriation provided to the Federal Court, Federal Circuit Court and the Family Court together from 2013-14 to 2017-18. Real recurrent expenditure in the Family Court has almost halved, from $101,940,000 in 2012-13 to $57,689,000 in 2018-19. Real recurrent expenditure in the Federal Circuit Court increased from $113,486,000 in 2012-13 to $154,942,000 in 2018-19. … From 30 June 2013 to 19 January 2018, only two additional judicial officers were added to each of the Federal Circuit Court and the Family Court of Australia, bringing the total to 66 FCC Judges and 33 Family Court Judges, representing a total increase of 4.2 percent. I think that paints a picture of a steady and increasing workload, steady and decreasing financial support and there being not enough judges. This is instructive. In the 2020-21 budget, the Commonwealth made multiple funding commitments for the federal family law courts, including $35.7 million over four years in additional resources and judges for the Federal Circuit Court to assist with the timely resolution of family law and migration matters and $2.5 million over two years from 2020-21 for federal family law courts to maintain specialised court lists for urgent matters arising from COVID-19. And on 13 November 2020, the Attorney-General, the Hon. Christian Porter, announced two new judicial appointments—current Federal Circuit Court Judge Thomas Altobelli to the Family Court and Kylie Beckhouse to the Federal Circuit Court. There's been a long period of lower funding and a long period of increased workload and outcomes that are not very good. Somehow or other—and I do respect the work of the Parliamentary Library—this is a very, very, very complex issue. There was a KPMG review in 2014, which stated: … it is recognised that the FCA, FCoA and FCC operate in a broader (constrained) fiscal environment which necessarily impacts on timely, efficient, equitable access to justice and facilitation of judicial decision-making. Equally, reported increases in case complexity and changes to the client profile mean that the courts are operating in a new landscape which presents challenges to the timely, equitable and efficient administration of justice. Presumably, in 2014, a Liberal coalition government initiated the KPMG report. At the time the KPMG review of all three courts projected budget deficits for the financial year 2014-15, and it was recognised that there were entrenched structural funding issues. Amongst other things, the KPMG review concluded: The current funding model for the Courts is not sustainable. The question of sustainability cannot simply be addressed through the injection of additional funds or one-off cuts, rather it requires more fundamental amendments to the model. To achieve the current budget across the forward estimates for all three Courts would require significant cuts to service and staffing levels. Such cuts to administrative services are unlikely to form a sustainable basis or driver for long-term efficiencies. There are 37 pages of information from the Parliamentary Library, which state in relation to the PwC report: In 2018, the Attorney-General's Department commissioned PwC to review the operations of the courts in relation to family law matters. The PwC report measured the performance of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court in the following ways: I said at the start that I'm not really across this issue per se, but the various submissions I have seen and the Parliamentary Library's Bills Digest tell me there's a huge problem here. When you look at the Senate reports, the joint committee reports and the position of respective organisations outside of the party—and Senator Sterle commented that there were 1,700 submissions—the majority of which don't appear to be in support of the government's position, you have a huge problem which is being fixed by government in a way that won't please anybody. If it doesn't please the legal fraternity, you may be able to say that they have a vested interest. But if it doesn't reduce the time taken to get matters delivered and if it doesn't reduce the amount of money litigants have to pay then how is it going to be more efficient? I think that's a question Minister Porter hasn't quite answered in this debate. I didn't hear any comments of note from the other side of the chamber. The Labor Party are opposed to this. I understand Senator Hanson has a different view. I understand the Australian Greens are going to oppose it. The crossbenchers will do what the crossbenchers do—they'll either support, oppose or transact on it. That's the way the parliamentary system works. I really do think that, if people are in the unfortunate situation of not being able to deal with family separation or family court matters in an amenable way and it does result in appearances at court and the use of lawyers and judges, then that should be an open, fair and transparent process. I can't imagine a family with three children going through 18 months of litigation about who has access to who, but that sort of stuff is happening. I think we are a better nation than that. People should have access to a jurisdiction that is eminently fair, reasonably inexpensive and adequately resourced so that the impacts that may be felt by children in these awful situations is minimalised. To sum up, from our position this is a very, very complex area. It's, if you like, a Labor Party legacy from Gough Whitlam's day. We've heard about people having their divorce published in the paper and the reasons why. No-one wants those days back, but we do want an open, transparent and fair system which allows access to justice, and it shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg; it shouldn't cost you half the family home. People should be guided into solutions. It isn't all that complex, and most people, when they sit down, could work it out themselves, but that's not the system we have and this won't make it any better.
Senator Chisholm, please resume your seat. You shall be in continuation. It's now time for senators' statements.
National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2020; In Committee | Bills | Senate debates
Senator Patrick, no amendments have been moved.
I too would like to make a contribution in this debate on the Australian economy. It's always interesting to follow Senator Bragg, because he usually gives you enough ammunition or material for a...
I too would like to make a contribution in this debate on the Australian economy. It's always interesting to follow Senator Bragg, because he usually gives you enough ammunition or material for a couple of contributions. But I don't want to get sidetracked into his ramble about rent-seekers and bloodsuckers, because those sorts of people are mainly on his side. We are 12 months into this pandemic. I think all Australians need to take a bow and say: 'We've done the best we possibly could as Australian citizens.' We've been led by a government that, despite having its flaws, has made some very impressive moves, and JobKeeper is amongst them. But then you look at JobKeeper and do the analysis over 12 months. The airline industry has had people unload and load planes since around 1959. In 1976 I was one of those people. Here we are in 2021, where a company like Qantas got JobKeeper. It sustained employment. Then it got done in the Federal Court for not quite following the rules, so to speak. Then they went to appeal, and it's now in the High Court. There's an old adage: business and Liberal governments will never waste a crisis. What has Qantas done? Qantas has abolished those jobs. They no longer exist as direct hire of the airlines. I worked for TAA, Australian Airlines and Qantas, but that job now no longer exists. There is a crisis, and they saw an opportunity to spend their ground-handling functions. They will come back at vastly lower, inferior rates—that's how it will work. Today Senator Sheldon asked a question about Virgin. They're getting JobKeeper, but they're already planning to get rid of 2,000 jobs. They're planning to get rid of those jobs because they know they're jobs that are hard to crack. They know they're full of unionists who have agreements, who have willpower, strength and the ability to organise, and who will resist attacks upon them. With the IR bill that's coming our way after 12 months of the pandemic, we can see very clearly what's going to happen into the future. There's another tranche of change in superannuation. That tranche of change in superannuation is going to impact most significantly—I think this is a point that needs to be stressed every day in this chamber—on working women. They work fewer hours to get less money, they live longer in retirement and their superannuation balances are lower. Any diminution in their ability to get decent superannuation prior to retirement condemns them to eking out an existence in retirement on the pension and struggling. The impact is not felt by highly organised union members; they just go and belt it out of the employer. There are plenty of transport employers now paying more than 12 per cent because it's been negotiated in agreements. As always, these changes impact on those who are least able to defend themselves, those who are least able to be organised and those who are more frequently out of the workforce and who, more often than not, get lower outcomes in respect of wages. These are the people that these changes will impact on. When Senator Bragg rails against that monster of superannuation, he's actually railing against the 50 per cent of the Australian community who are going to struggle to even get close to a respectable retirement income—and that is the women working in Australia. I'd like to have a look, and I might even ask in estimates if there's any assessment of how many women took money out of their superannuation accounts. How many women availed themselves of the $20,000 and potentially put themselves well down the path to poverty in retirement? That's what this government facilitated. It all sounded very good: 'Take 20 grand out and look after yourself.' But you really took your future away. It will always impact on those least able to defend themselves: migrant workers, unorganised workers and women workers. If we go into the IR changes, Senator Bragg says we have to get taxes down and make it easier for people to employ in Australia. Well, it's easy to employ in Australia; there's thousands and millions of hardworking Australians who will give you 120 per cent a day. All they ask for is the legal outcome with respect to an award or an enterprise agreement. But it's been falling away for decades now. I spoke to a young woman the other day. She is at university, had three months off, got a job and was getting quite respectable pay. Her complaint was twofold. One is that she never got paid on the same day of the week at any time. If Monday was payday, it came on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Her other complaint was that her superannuation appeared on her payslip but it didn't appear in her account. This is going on every day of the week. No-one is policing this stuff. We had a company fold in Adelaide the other day despite the enormous injection of capital works into Adelaide. There has been an enormous injection of capital works into steel fabrication, concrete road building and the like. A company fell over with $200 million worth of debt, leaving a parade of small businesses in its wake and leaving hundreds of workers unpaid. One of the telling things that I noticed was that one of the workers said, 'I knew the company was in trouble when my super stopped going into my account 12 months ago.' It came on his payslip but it wasn't going into his account. There is enormous avoidance of legal responsibilities right now, but Senator Bragg's position is: 'We need to make it easier. It's all too complex. Superannuation—what's that? 12 per cent? What's that?' It's simple: it's a part of the employment agreement. It's a legislated component of the laws of Australia. It's not tough. It's not hard to understand, and neither is wages. People who have 42,000 items in their grocery stores and who, with an algorithm, can check out their profitability in an eye blink claim that IR and wages are too expensive or too hard to understand. It's not too hard to understand. It's simple to understand. There are laws in Australia that need to be maintained, safeguarded and policed, and they're not at the moment. The solution is not to dumb them down. The solution is not to give people a bigger and wider avenue to rort and take money off workers, because, at the end of the day, that's going to make the economy smaller, and we need to make the economy bigger. Those with position, power and privilege—which the Liberals are well versed in dealing with—don't need a hand. The Commonwealth Bank doesn't need a hand. They're working out how big a dividend they want to pay. They don't need a hand on commercial lending or weakening of standards. One in two Australians are with the Commonwealth Bank. Why would you give the bank a hand? They should be in there getting competition enforced upon them. The regulations should be saying, 'Make sure you're doing the right thing here.' That's what the royal commission found. Senator Bragg has a jihad against the superannuation industry, but there's no evidence that the $3 trillion superannuation industry hasn't contributed to Australia's continued economic growth. We have one of the largest saving pools of any country in the world. The other day I heard Senator Hume say '$30 billion worth of fees--more than the electricity spend in the country'. If it's $3 trillion and $30 billion, is that one per cent? My maths is not really good, but it's probably around one per cent, which in terms of investment fee outcomes is not all that high. I accept there can always be efficiencies. As a superannuation participant in industry super, I look at those fees quite often, but I don't find any reason to be calling people rent seekers and blood suckers, like Senator Bragg does. Here we are, 12 months into the pandemic, and now crunch time is coming. I think parts of the economy are going really well. The housing industry is overheating. I look at some of the prices paid in suburbs around me and wonder. I bought a house 15 years ago for probably 20 per cent of what they're selling for now. The housing economy is overheating. I've just built a house. I've just completed a house. There was a bit of delay because people were very busy. We went very quickly from an era where builders were going broke to now, where builders can't get the work done on time. There is a bubble going on and it will come off the boil. We want to make sure that we don't collapse in a heap in certain segments of the economy in the next six to 12 months. I think, importantly, we need to provide ongoing, secure, well-paid, permanent jobs. We can't exist on this plethora of: 'Okay, I have a job as a security guard. I'm now going to go and work for Ola, Uber, Menulog and someone else to try and cobble together 45 hours a week.' We can't exist on that basis forever. I accept that there will always be people who will do two jobs, and even three jobs, and that's fine. They're hardworking people and they're entitled to do that. If we can get back to a bit more permanent employment, a bit more ongoing employment and a bit more certainty, it will steady and underpin a recovery in the economy. I want to finish on some of the ideology. You can bring this industrial legislation into the parliament and you can pass it. I have spent most of my working life in the industrial relations environment. You will target Mr John Setka, or Mr Transport Worker, or Mr Building Worker, or Mr Meat Worker, or whatever, but the actual effect of what will happen is you will punish the most vulnerable in the community. You will punish the least organised, the least educated and the lowest paid. If your plan is to have an Australia where you push down people who need a hand up, you're not going to be successful. There is the history of the 12 years of the Howard government. I was a union secretary in all of those 12 years. I got smarter every day. I got sharper every day. Our finances got better every day. We survived those 12 years and came out much stronger. We didn't lose wages and conditions. We bargained hard with employers and got deals. You can change the laws, but the effect of those laws changes. They won't change where you think they're going to change. They will change and decimate people least able to defend themselves—those who have done nothing to you: women in the workforce, cleaners in the workforce, low-paid migrant workers in the workforce. If the employer has the ability to say, 'I'm going to do this agreement and you lot are all going to vote for it,' and they say, 'Okay; yes, Boss,' that's what will happen. It won't happen in an organised workplace. It won't happen in many transport yards—it'll happen in some. I think the old adage is to never waste a crisis—you're going to be able to point to a mountain of debt and say, 'If we don't do this, you are going to get that.' I've got to tell you: organised labour will defend itself. Organised labour has always defended itself. The effect will primarily be felt by the women in the workforce, particularly with respect to superannuation—I think that is an empirical fact—lower wages, fewer hours, less time in the workforce, reduction in super entitlements, longer in retirement, lower return. They live longer. So it's really one-way traffic there. And, if we look at the industrial relations effect, it will be predominantly amongst unorganised migrant workers who are least able to understand the system. They're not organised and they're going to suffer exponentially. I'm sure that there are those in the Liberal Party who have a penchant for attacking on the industrial relations front, and I'm sure that there are plenty of other people on that side who have a bit more compassion and understanding of how this system works. Let's hope that Australia doesn't go into this period of creating a mass underclass of underprivileged, underpaid, poorly researched and underfunded-in-retirement workers. I really do hope those opposite take some notice, particularly in respect of women and the outcomes for women in super and in attacking IR.
Callaghan, Mr Kym Leslie, OAM | Adjournment | Senate debates
I want to put some remarks on the table about the Australia Day honours list in which 844 Australians were recognised. In announcing the list, the Governor-General said: On behalf of all...
I want to put some remarks on the table about the Australia Day honours list in which 844 Australians were recognised. In announcing the list, the Governor-General said: On behalf of all Australians, I congratulate everyone recognised in the Australia Day Honours list. The individuals we celebrate today come from all parts of our great nation and have served the community in almost every way conceivable. They're diverse and unique but there are some common characteristics, including selflessness, commitment and dedication. Recipients have not put their hand up to be recognised. Most would consider the achievements that they are being recognised for to be 'ordinary' or just what they do. Therein is the great strength of our system—recipients in the Order of Australia have been nominated by their peers, considered by an independent process and, today, recognised by the nation. The sum of these contributions speaks to our nation's greatest strength—its people. I want to put that on the record. I know there's been a lot of debate about the day, and I don't want go anywhere near that, but I do want to single out one recipient of an Australia Day award: Mr Kym Leslie Callaghan. He has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. It's for service to local government and the community of Elliston. Mr Callaghan was chairman of the District Council of Elliston from 2014 to 2018 and was involved in the establishment of the Wirangu Reconciliation Monument in 2018. He was deputy chairman in 2014 and an elected member since 2010. He served on the Mid West Health Advisory Council for five years. He established the Elliston Men's Shed, among many, many other achievements. These are people who work selflessly in far corners of Australia and dedicate their entire activities to community health, wellbeing and involvement. One of the great achievements of Mr Callaghan was the Elliston Coastal Trail. The walking trail goes for 14 kilometres along a stunning coastline—a tourist icon, if you like. Getting that project to finality was not without some difficulties. Along the way, and despite much discussion and disconcertment, he managed to establish a reconciliation monument which actually recognised an awful massacre in 1849, where a group of what were considered 'natives' in those days were driven off the cliff. I attended the opening of that monument with Senator Pat Dodson, and I'm sure that he will concur that that was one of the most memorable occasions in my time as a senator. It's a really remarkable, stunning monument which changes with the light, as it would; it's a marble statue. The council workers look after it in a most diligent way. It's revered and respected. Coincidentally, I had known Kym in a previous incarnation of work. He was a TWU delegate at Armaguard and a self-funded retiree who went to the Elliston area. He lives at Sheringa, not far from Elliston. He found himself with a bit of time on his hands and put it to very, very good use. He is an enormous contributor to that area. I think that is the real key to the Australia Day awards. These are people who don't seek recognition. Kym doesn't know I'm speaking about him today. He will know tomorrow, but he doesn't know today, and I'm sure he'd enjoy a quiet beer after the contribution tonight. But I just want it on the record here, these people are what makes the fabric of Australia tick: selfless people who do more than they need to do, who reach out to people, who look for opportunities to heal, who look for opportunities to build recognition and build reconciliation. None of that work was easy on Mr Callaghan. None of that work was easy on him. Senator Dodson and I were there to witness that glorious weekend where the community came together and celebrated the memorial. The Dusty Feet Mob from Port Augusta came down and sang and danced in that area, and brought a tear to most people's eyes. Well done, Kim. Keep up the good work!
Workplace Relations | Questions without Notice | Senate debates
Mr Jason Falinski, Mr Tim Wilson and Senator Bragg have advocated for greater industrial relations flexibility, jointly authoring an op-ed and lobbying within the coalition. Do coalition...
Mr Jason Falinski, Mr Tim Wilson and Senator Bragg have advocated for greater industrial relations flexibility, jointly authoring an op-ed and lobbying within the coalition. Do coalition backbenchers support the retreat by the Morrison government flagged in this morning's papers?
Senator Stoker said in her first speech: Industrial relations reform is something our nation desperately needs and which the conservative side of politics should promote. Does Senator Stoker...
Senator Stoker said in her first speech: Industrial relations reform is something our nation desperately needs and which the conservative side of politics should promote. Does Senator Stoker support the retreat floated in this morning's papers?