Barnaby Joyce (New England, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Leader of the House, representing the Minister for Environment and Water. I heard you today talking about your support for workers, so I put the challenge to you: we have 79 workers at Deniliquin and Leeton who've received their redundancy notice because of the peculiarity that you are unable to credit floodwaters as environmental flow. This is merely a bureaucratic decision. Do you promise those workers, members of the United Workers Union, that you will change this decision and give them back their jobs before they get flushed down the river?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) | Link to this | Hansard source

Anything that goes to the condition of individual workers in the way that's just been described—I haven't been briefed on what's been described, but I take it from the way the member has put it—equates to a significant issue, particularly for those involved. I'm happy to find out about that, get briefed on it and report directly to the member.