Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Through the chair, what will happen is a comedy hour when the rest of them come in. It will be the National Party trying to justify why they did absolutely nothing to save jobs at SPC. They will go on the attack against workers who want to be represented by a union. They will attack workers' wages and conditions and they will try to blacken the name of workers who dare to negotiate an agreement collectively with their union. It will be pretty low-grade stuff coming from a pretty low-grade level set by Senator Ronaldson.

We will have to deal with many problems—for example, the casual employment that is going to be rampant here. The Canadian Conservative government has been looking at this phenomenon. In Canada, workers between the age of 25 and 49, when they lose their jobs in manufacturing industry, end up being absolutely worse off. What happens to those workers? Their wages end up being between nine per cent and 22 per cent worse after they lose their jobs in manufacturing. That is exactly what is going to happen here.

We have a policy to deal with such problems. We know what needs to be done. We do not want to rush into free trade agreements which simply destroy jobs in this country. The minister on the other side is thinking, 'Get a free trade agreement in as quickly as you can so I can say I've done something.' But we on this side want to look after working people. Let us look at what happened at Mitsubishi when workers lost their jobs there. One female 31-year-old former production worker, in interviews with Adelaide University, said:

I’ve got two agencies that I work for just to keep the work up because every now and then you might get 20 hours one week and then you’ll get 50 hours the next week … you’ve got to take it while it’s there because the next week it might not be. And you don’t get holiday pay and sick pay

That will please the Work Choices warriors on the other side who, until 2007, fought against working people by trying to take away their rights and conditions through Work Choices. They will be very happy that workers do not get annual leave. They will be very happy that workers do not get sick pay. What they are about is a low-wage economy—a mining and tourism economy—instead of a manufacturing economy. A former draughtsman in his early 60s on short-term contracts explained his situation, having done a lot of work for which he needed to be paid. He said:

The guy I’m working for is not in a very good financial position. I’ve drawn up a wages bill that’s getting a little out of hand and he can’t pay me. So all sorts of promises and I’m looking at going somewhere else. I’ve been to a couple of other places on contract but it’s only for a week at a time and there’s nowhere else to go …

This is a draughtsman—a skilled person—who has lost his job in the car industry and who cannot even get a regular income. That is why Labor fights for proper industry policy. That is why we want to look after workers and look after their communities. A 51-year-old former maintenance fitter who became a part-time security guard said:

There doesn't seem to be jobs around for people of my age—

he is a skilled fitter—

and particularly or almost definitely no permanent job. It seems to be casual. They’ll take you on for maybe a couple of days.

These are the experiences of workers who lose their jobs in the manufacturing sector. Did we hear one word from the government about what is going to be done for them? No, we absolutely did not. We heard a diatribe about the carbon tax and ideological talk about a strong economy, but we heard nothing about what is going to be done either for workers who are losing their jobs or for their communities. The positions of the politicians in this place from Victoria and Adelaide have been absolutely hopeless. Only one politician on the coalition side has belled the cat—Dr Sharman Stone, when she said the Prime Minister was lying and blackening the name of workers at SPC. That is the reality, and it was stated by their own MP.

We want to make sure that there is a strong industry policy and that we do not run around attacking the trade union movement or union members because they want to collectively bargain. We do not want to push their wages and conditions down. I know that, when I was a tradesman working in a number of industries, I needed my annual leave loading and that I needed my penalty rates to pay my bills. But if you are in here you do not need annual leave loading or penalty rates, because you are doing all right. The other side do not know what it is like to be a worker in trouble. They do not know what it is like to not be able to pay their mortgage. But they will give no support to industry policy or to workers, and ideology will triumph over the national interest. It is an absolute disgrace—it is reprehensible.