Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not at Holden, but I can remember at David Jones years ago, when they were closing John Martin, a certain chief executive sailing off with a huge entitlement package while workers in South Australia, particularly long-term casuals, had to fight in court to get their redundancy payments. I remember that. It is quite common for the top end of town to have a different set of rules for separation packages, particularly in relation to stock options, than they have for the people at the bottom who actually do the work and create the value and the wealth.

The bill also guarantees payment in lieu of notice, capped at five weeks, and that is not an unreasonable thing to do. Workers do deserve notice. I have been in many situations and seen many situations, particularly in the textile industry, where companies would be saying to workers, right up until literally the day before they announced closures, that they would not be closing and that it was business as usual and all the rest of it. Often one of the things that hurt and frustrate workers most of all is the persistent lying that goes on up until closures are announced. Often workers know that the writing is on the wall; they hear the rumours. But what we often see is—and I will not call it lying—corporate obfuscation about what they are doing.

So, having a payment in lieu of notice is an important thing. Getting notice is an even nicer thing—and, of course, guaranteeing annual leave and long service leave. It should be stressed that often people in these companies—companies that are under economic stress—will not let you take your long service leave or will delay letting you take it and will delay letting you take your annual leave. So people bank a lot of leave. That is a common thing that happens.

These sorts of things are very important for workers—things like a safety net, a guarantee. We know that for decades they basically endured without these, and people lost vast amounts of money over the years, unable to obtain their funds. Or they sat in a line of creditors, behind banks and behind others, waiting for their entitlements—and we know that was a persistent worry.

There have been some unions, I have to say, who were particularly active in making sure this issue was front and centre, and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union was one of them. I can remember them talking about this, particularly in the car components industry—people like John Camillo and John Gee, out there on the barricades making sure workers' entitlements were paid and making sure they had a guarantee of those entitlements. And I remember people like Bob Donnelly from the CEPU and others being out there on the shop floor making sure workers got their entitlements. But what we are doing here in this House is legislating to make sure union leaders do not have to fight battle after battle and fight after fight to make sure people just get their entitlements. We want to make sure that people have some reasonable certainty about their situation with regard to their entitlements in times of insolvency.

This is a very good bill. It proves that despite all the rhetoric of those opposite the Labor movement still exists for working people across this country. It puts into place important guarantees, and it should give everybody who believes in that old Australian saying about a fair day's pay for a fair day's work some reassurance that that still means something in this modern age.

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