Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, seriously. If I throw a stick, will you go and catch it? They had 10 years of deliberate policy to stagnate and lower wages, and they still do it today. Even the member opposite scurrying out of the chamber wants to do nothing but cause division and chaos, because that's all they know. They couldn't do anything about working together and delivering things. Let's think about the government that we've taken over from and what they did. We had 10 years of a government that kept wages low, 10 years of division and 10 years of doing everything they could to suppress the ability of Australians to pay their bills and get a better life.

They hate aspiration. They sit there and use these terms like 'union thugs'. Let's think about it—union thugs. They were happy to stand here over the last couple of years and say: 'Aren't they great, our nurses, who we send out there and make work during a pandemic? And the people delivering food to the stores?' With our truck drivers, they fought against a road safety tribunal to deliver proper wages and conditions for the people that carry this country. They just hate workers. There is nothing more they like than to see workers suppressed so they can sit back and feel superior, but in fact they are very inferior to the people that went out there, joined unions and worked together.

Collective bargaining is so important. I can remember when I worked at Mercedes-Benz. A 16-year-old kid came in to become an apprentice. He had to sit there with the entire might and negotiate and bargain with one of the largest companies in the world's HR department, lawyers and managers. That's why you have a union representative there. Unions fought to give those guys overalls, toolkits, safety and all the other things that matter to Australian workers right across this nation, but they sit there proudly saying, 'We should be against that.' It beggars belief that someone can come into this place and claim to be as intelligent as they do but then sit there and fight against the idea of protecting people and giving them safe workplaces.

Yes, we're getting rid of the ABCC, and a damn good decision it is, because it has done nothing to improve health and safety. You have got to ask: what is it you've got against stickers on helmets? How does that impact the economy or destroy the nation, if somebody puts a sticker on their helmet? But that's the pettiness you have in this modern rump of a leftover coalition we have sitting there. You think about everything they've fought against over the last 10 years. They fought against wage theft. They were quite happy to see people get their wages illegally docked and do nothing about it. They fought against collective bargaining. They've done that all the way through.

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