Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is my assertion, Member for Deakin. I respect the member for Deakin. He is a very decent Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations. I am his deputy; I quite often to defer to him, at least in administrative matters, because he has got the numbers. It is true to say, and I am making an assertion, that the effects of the Work Choices act in the country will be compounded because of where people live. When you reduce the security of employment in smaller communities, the chances of finding work are smaller and people are going to have greater difficulty if you increase exponentially the precarious nature of work.

We know we are now the most casualised workforce amongst all OECD countries. More than one-quarter of our workforce is casualised. And what does the government do to redress this? It introduces legislation that will accelerate the casualisation of work and accelerate the precarious nature of employment for people who require security and certainty. It would be dishonest for members of parliament to say that we can do all things, that we can regulate all matters of things that are beyond our control. It would be wrong for us to pretend that we can turn back the clock to a time where almost all employment would be Monday to Friday day shift. That is not possible, nor is it necessarily preferable. But we should not be introducing laws in this country that will allow employers to unreasonably treat their employees, to unfairly sack their workforce without any legal recourse. To legally enact a law to say, ‘Yes, you may well be unfairly sacked but you have nowhere to go; we’re not interested,’ is not something most Australians would accept. That would be another reason why all the electorates in this country would be a little unhappier, and they will all know about the unhappiness as the Work Choices act unfortunately takes effect throughout the course of this year.

I started my speech on the appropriation bills talking about the lack of resources in my electorate. If I compared my electorate to one that is not too far away—not Deakin; I will leave Deakin alone, although it once was a marginal, so I should check the grants that Deakin received—say, McEwen, held by Fran Bailey, and the number of sports grants that the member for McEwen received leading up to the last election, she received 17 out of 27 of the grants that were given under that heading in the nation. I have got to give her credit for being able to lobby whichever minister was responsible, but those constituents in my electorate who are not that far away from the communities in McEwen are wondering why they received none, although applications were made. They are forever receiving far fewer grants, whether it is in the area of education or sport, compared with other electorates that are close by which are, in socioeconomic terms, better off.

Labor governments of the past have done this. I do not think they have made it an art form like the Howard government. The pork-barrelling is extraordinary; it has got to the point where it is hard to say it without scratching your head as to how they can get away with this sort of rorting. But it is about time all governments of all colours—I do not care who is elected—start worrying about the marginalised and not the marginals. Start worrying about the people who are disenfranchised, who lack resources in the areas of education and health, who have transport needs that are not being addressed and where merit is not even in the argument as to where Commonwealth expenditure goes. There has got to be a way in which we can get rid of what people believe they need to do to stay in government or to get elected—that is, to bribe people in marginal seats. This bribing or rorting that goes on, this disproportionate allocation of Commonwealth money to areas that are not necessarily in need—certainly not in as much need as other areas—is a national disgrace.

Something must be done to ensure that, from now on, governments do not allocate Commonwealth resources on the basis of purely electoral benefit for the party in government but focus on the needs of Australian citizens, treat them equally and attend to their needs where help is most wanted. Unfortunately, the government does not have any interest in doing that. It is therefore important that this obsession with marginal electorates—at the expense of the marginalised—should be raised in this place, and publicly, as often as possible. We have a very sceptical and cynical electorate who believe they should make safe government seats marginal because it is the only way they are going to get anything. Whether it be a safe Labor, Liberal or Nationals seat, the electorate think they had better make it marginal because they cannot get anything from government unless government thinks it can determine the election outcome in an electorate by giving money to the region.

We have to change that view, and we can only do that when we have an accountable government which bases its decisions on the needs of the nation and allocates money on the basis of merit and does not pork-barrel for electoral advantage. It may be some time before those new criteria take hold, but ultimately I think the community will demand it of government because too many constituents go without. There are certainly constituents in my electorate who are not properly attended to, not only by the Commonwealth but also by other governments. I think it is about time that attitude towards pork-barrelling changed.

See this speech in context