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

I am happy to direct my comments through the chair. This government attempted to fix that program four or five times. Eventually Senator Birmingham from the other place did it. I know Senator Birmingham. He is a smart cookie. He has now fixed it, because he has come down on them like a ton of bricks. Previous ministers tried to say, 'Maybe we can negotiate with these people.' The truth is that whenever there is a Commonwealth dollar you can bet your bottom dollar—do not be naive about it—that there will be some bottom feeder out there who will set up a method of rorting the program.

Ms Henderson interjecting—

Those opposite come in here with their rote-learning speeches where they recite the lines—and the member for Corangamite is a little bit better at disguising the lines. I heard some speeches last night. Honestly, they turn page 3 and then this is what page 4 says. I have seen speeches like that before—on both sides of the House. But the learning from this is that you need to question the executive, because when they come up with a program like this, which, frankly, you could drive a truck through—there is no definition of 'an intern' and no real safeguards—it could be rorted by a middle man or by just your local company who thinks, 'Well, I'm going to get rid of all my existing workers and bring in all these interns.' And do not tell me it will not happen. I have seen whole companies where everybody is on a traineeship. There is nobody to train the trainees, because every single employee was on a traineeship. I remember one South Australian employer where even the owner of the company was on the traineeship. That was in the Howard years, so we are going back a few years.

There has been completely shameless abuse of government programs across governments of various persuasions. So this is the thing: do not think that there is not someone out there right at this moment looking at this bill and thinking, 'How can I make some money out of this? How can I exploit this? How can I use this?' because you can bet they will. And you will have to come back here when the first scandal comes out and we will read all your speeches back to you. When it appears on the ABC or when The Sydney Morning Herald does an investigation, guess what will happen? We will have to come back here and read all of your silly speeches about it where you recited the lines that were written by some 22-year-old in the minister's office—with all of that life experience there.

That is the problem with this bill. It is just sloppy. And whatever you say, we have got a second reading amendment with which the member for Chifley, he has learnt, is wisely going to push it off into a Senate inquiry. Hopefully, that will tighten this bill up. This is dangerous stuff, because it is full of exactly the sort of naive thinking, the wishful thinking, that is present on this government's back bench. As I said before, they are in a death spiral, so they are grasping onto whatever they can. But this is the wrong thing to grasp onto. I would encourage those opposite to start doing your jobs on the back bench. Behind the scenes, actually start to put a bit of pressure on your executive—who are all shifting though their jobs so quickly that they are not really paying attention, let's be honest, with all the ministerial changes in this government. Start doing your jobs.

See this speech in context