Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Darrin Lenton is a single dad with two children who lives in the community that I'm fortunate to represent. Darrin has worked for Qantas for 23 years. Last week Darrin and 2½ thousand of his co-workers were sacked by Australia's national airline. It's bad enough being sacked during a pandemic and it's bad enough that Qantas is receiving JobKeeper from the government for those workers that it sacked, but in the ultimate insult the work of the workers who are losing their jobs will be contracted out to a foreign corporation. The workers will come in, take their jobs and work for lower pay and conditions. It's corporate immorality at its worst. Many of these workers have loyally been working for Qantas for many, many decades.

Many of the workers who lost their jobs in Qantas and in the aviation sector more generally live in my electorate and the electorate of the Prime Minister. I'm asking the Prime Minister today: what is your government doing to stop companies contracting out the work of employees and then having other workers come in and take that work for lower pay and conditions? Labor had a policy at the last election to stop this. When is the Prime Minister going to stand up for the workers who work for Qantas and other companies in his electorate and stop their jobs being contracted out?