Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I apologise in advance—I have one of those shocking colds that's going around at the moment. I actually cancelled speaking on every piece of legislation today, but not this legislation. That shows you that the spirit and the intent is wholeheartedly supported by me and also by the government. I will begin by acknowledging the Marxist member for Melbourne and his speech, as he acknowledged the speaker before him. You're always so negative, Marxist member for Melbourne—'negative, negative, lemon negative,' as they would say in The Thick of It. Never has there been any legislation brought into this place by the government that has not attracted your contempt, your ire or your ridicule when we're simply trying to do the right thing.

The thing about this government and this parliament is it's intention, at every point, of working for the Australian community so people are able to realise their own dreams. We're the people who actually back people who get up every day—and I've spoken about it before—and have their breakfast, brush their teeth and get on with helping to build the future of this nation, if by doing nothing more than taking care of themselves and their families, being able to buy their own home and being able to go on and retire with security. The provisions in this bill are about turning around and saying: 'If you have been wronged, we're going to back you too. If you have been wronged because the company you worked for has done the wrong thing—has sought to minimise its obligations and not meet the reasonable expectations that any worker in this country has around unpaid wages, annual leave, long service leave, payment in lieu of notice and redundancy pay—we're going to expect the company to do the right thing.'

Responsibility and loyalty go both ways. Workers who do the right thing deserve to have employers do the right thing by them, because they have offered their labour—a fair day's work—for a fair day's pay. Where that is denied then the employer must have the responsibility in return, rather than seeking to buck-pass it through trickery, through finding different legal instruments or different ways—phoenixing, as the member for Melbourne talked about before, and others—to minimise their obligations. That isn't a society built on responsibility. It's certainly not a society built on the responsibility that, I would hope, we all think employers have to workers and government has to citizens, where appropriate. Equally, workers have a responsibility to their employer, because it's not some uni-transaction where employers come along and seek to manipulate, and take away advantages, and screw over the workers—though sometimes that does happen. I'm not sure whether 'screwing over' is unparliamentary language. I saw that question mark.

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