Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and as we stare down the barrel of the silly season, we must remember who really pays the price as we add another item to our cart of online shopping this Christmas. It is our Australian workers in distribution centres, our delivery drivers and our transport workers who are being pushed to the absolute brink by big American companies like Amazon.

Amazon runs on speed, but it shouldn't run on broken bodies and broken livelihoods. When companies like Amazon cut corners and grind workers to the bone, it sets a dangerous standard for every warehouse and delivery driver in this country. If you don't pay your fair share of tax, if you deny workers their right to a toilet break and if you use AI to track every second of their working day, like a robot, then you are not a very jolly company at all.

I commend the SDA and the Transport Workers' Union for calling out this behaviour. I stand with our unions—the SDA, TWU and others—who are standing up to protect Australians from covert attempts to Americanise our workforce. They are protecting Australians from a corporation that has built its profits on relentless pressure, punishing conditions, and a business model that treats humans as though they are expendable. If you want to do business here, you need to abide by Australian laws and Australian regulations and you need to provide fair pay and conditions for Australian workers. Make Amazon Pay is not just a slogan; it is a call to defend the basic principles of fairness, transparency, accountability and democracy.

A word of warning to Amazon: learn from the mistakes of BHP, an Australian company that tried to exploit loopholes to underpay their contract staff; they fought this government's same pay, same job legislation and they lost twice at the Fair Work Commission. If Amazon can't abide by Australian law, they might lose too.